


Teen Wolf

by Bitsy



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Typical Violence, F/M, I'm a giant nerd, M/M, Mostly from Stiles' perspective, Multi, Stiles gets the bite instead of Scott, Werewolf!Stiles, human!Scott, season 1 AU, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:08:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3391172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bitsy/pseuds/Bitsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Stiles, what the hell are you doing?!"</i>
  <br/>
  <i>"What am I...? What are you doing? Why do you have a bat?!"</i>
  <br/>
  <i>"I thought you were a predator!"</i>
</p><p>When Stiles gets his best friend to follow him into the Beacon Hills Preserve, they were trying to find a dead body. What they found instead changed everything forever.</p><p>Season 1 AU in which Stiles is bitten instead of Scott. I'm sure this has been done before, but what the hell, why not?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

As the full moon rose over Beacon Hills, a lone figure stood at the edge of a cliff. The kids called the cliff Makeout Point. The adults and authorities called it dangerous. And the adults and authorities had no idea just how right they were. In that moment, there was nothing more dangerous in the world than that cliff. Or rather, that figure on the cliff. The figure inspected its hands, more paws than anything else, watching the red-black gore dripping off its fur and claws. The power wasn't subtle, not at all. It had hit like a freight train, knocking it breathless even as it braced itself against the impact. It had heard rumors of this, rumors that spoke of blood sacrifice and family and pack and _hatred._ But the rumors did nothing to describe the reality. There were no words that could encompass this feeling of purest satisfaction, of knowing that this was the right and proper way of things. 

The figure glanced at what was left of his niece, and it was surprised to feel the tiniest tinge of remorse in there too. But then, it was swept away in the power, and buried forever. There was only one thing left to do; the declaration had to be made now. So it tilted back its head, shaggy, mangy fur falling in uneven, wetish clumps, and it howled. It howled for vengeance, for retribution, in final a challenge to take and take and take from this world until it was ash. It was the Alpha now, and it would remake this town in its image. The town seemed to shudder to itself as the howl echoed across the valley. Perhaps it wasn't his imagination that the lights suddenly dimmed and then got brighter as he declared himself. Car alarms went off, dogs echoed his howl, and the forest held its breath. It was done. The path was set. And that would have been the end of it, except for one tiny little problem. It had no pack. It had _one_ surly and recalcitrant Beta, who wasn't even back in town yet. 

Well.

No problem.

It would just have to turn as many people as it could. Slowly, of course. Carefully. It would have to pick and choose its opportunities. But then again, it was always good at a long game. It...no, _he_ could play a long game. Mental habits were so hard to break, it wasn't an it anymore, it was a he. He had a name. And he would make this town - and the hunters - rue the day they ever heard it.

***

Stiles Stilinski liked his music loud, and his web browser lagging. If he didn't have at least twenty tabs open at any given time, it was a wasted afternoon. Today, he had seven Wikipedia tabs alone, not to mention Tumblr, the WoW forums, Reddit, and so on. And as Maroon 5 thumped its way through his computer's speakers, Stiles' foot tapped along erratically to the beat. His focus was scattered on a good day, but today he'd had plenty of Adderall. Weirdly enough, the music helped him, gave the idle part of his brain something to hone in on. He wondered if other people with ADHD had several different tracks their brains chugged away on. With his meds, he could (if pressed) get his focus down to two things. Without his meds, he got sleepy and fuzzy and hyper all at once, and then he was off to the races. The highest number of separate tracks he'd counted was seven. He generally averaged four. No wonder his teachers despaired of ever getting him on topic; he couldn't help it, his brain was a wild, bucking stallion, with no chance of ever being tamed. Boredom for him wasn't just dull, it was _dangerous._

One part of his attention was always keyed to his father's presence. Here or at the station, Stiles always tried to keep tabs on his father's whereabouts. So he had a police radio scanner in his room. Sure, no big deal that his Jeep also had a ham radio that was on the official dispatch frequency. He was the son of the sheriff, it was practically his God-given right to spy on the man. He only had his well-being in mind, after all! Okay, so it was all totally and thoroughly illegal and could get his father suspended or worse. But that would only happen if he got caught. And Stiles rarely got caught. Or if he did get caught, it was for minor things, a little bit of misdirection from the big stuff. He'd learned to lie with a straight face nearly eight years ago, and he had no intention of stopping now. Two simple words - "I'm fine," - had become the foundation for an entire life of calumny. So he might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie. So what? At least he wasn't out speeding on motorcycles or doing drugs or something. He got his adrenaline rush from snooping on his father's department. There were worse things in the world.

So as he worked on his paper for Coach Finstock, he listened with half an ear to the scanner. It was always kept on when his dad was at the station, and turned off when his dad was home. There was nothing special about today. A few speeding tickets, one minor drunken brawl at the town's only dive bar, and a lost cat. Boooooooring. Nothing ever happened in this town. No wonder his paper veered off onto the historical foundation for male circumcision. He was bored, and this seemed like a good way to get a rise (ahem) out of Coach. There was something incredibly satisfying about making the man go a little crazier than usual. 

Stiles was elbow deep in Jewish lore when he heard the front door slam. And then he was up and moving. The music was turned down, the scanner was turned off, and his Tumblr tab was closed. Just in time, because his father poked his head through his open bedroom door a second later.

"Hey, kid. I'm home for the night."

"Hey, dad."

Stiles put on a distracted tone, his fingers still flying over his keyboard, acting for all the world like he was indifferent to his father's comings and goings. That was how they operated, a wall up in between them, keeping real emotions at arm's length. And that worked fine for both of them. His dad wasn't exactly the most emotionally available guy, after all. A cop had to be able to compartmentalize, and Stiles had learned that trick at his knee.

"What do you wanna do for dinner tonight?"

"No pizza," he snapped, finally swiveling around to give him a look. "You promised."

"Yeah, I know. No salad, either, though."

Father and son faced off for a moment, before Stiles shrugged and relented.

"There's a veggie lasagna in the freezer. I got it on the way home from school. Just turn the oven to 375, and follow the directions."

"...I can live with veggie lasagna," the sheriff conceded after a moment, and Stiles relaxed as the man stepped out again. He loved his dad, loved him so much there were no words for it sometimes. So when his cholesterol test came back high a few months ago, Stiles had brought the hammer down. He'd expected a lot more whining from his dad, frankly, but the older man seemed to buckle under the new healthy regime. Maybe they were finally getting somewhere.

Filling the hours of their evening off, father and son ate a quiet meal, watched a basketball game that Stiles had zero interest in. But he brought his laptop down to work on his essay some more, long fingers tapping relentlessly over the keyboard. If the noise annoyed his father, the man gave no sign of it. Around eight o'clock, though, the phone rang. It was a land line call, too, which meant official station business. Stiles flailed himself up off the sofa, almost dropping his laptop in his haste to get to the phone first. Of course, his father was counting on that, and carefully and deliberately tripped him back onto the couch with a deft foot. As Stiles whoofed back onto the cushions, the sheriff quickly plucked up the receiver.

"Hello? Yeah. Uh huh. ...Oh, god."

And with that, he picked up the entire telephone and moved into his soundproofed office, closing the door with a click. But Stiles wasn't thwarted. He simply moved into the kitchen, and very carefully picked up the land line in there. Really, his dad should know better than this by now. With his palm muffling the receiver, Stiles listened in to the whole conversation. And then wasn't sure if he should be sick or bouncing with excitement. Because two joggers had found a body in the preserve. _Half_ a body. Only half. A girl, maybe mid-twenties. It was the most brutal death to happen in Beacon Hills in six years, since a fire wiped out most of the Hale family. Stiles had a morbid fascination with this sort of thing, a sort of a 'can't look away' feeling, like standing at the top of a tall cliff and looking straight down. Most people would just see the drop. Stiles saw the drop, and heard a little voice in the back of his head that told him _exactly_ what would happen if he jumped. So he was like a moth to a flame, drawn to the permanent finality of death. Nothing _bad._ Just...fascinated. He knew that made him a Grade-A weirdo sometimes, as his best friend loved to remind him.

Oh, shit. _Scott._ Scott needed to know this right away. It would be their Stand By Me moment, Scott could be Jerry O'Connell and Stiles could be River Phoenix! If they found the rest of the body, they'd be heroes. They might even be able to figure out who did it to the poor girl. Solving a brutal murder? God, everybody would be so impressed. Lydia would be so impressed. 

And that made up his mind, as far as he was concerned.

Slowly, he dropped the receiver back into the cradle, finger pressing down on the button to hang up the call without a 'click' to make his father aware that he had been listening in. He was back on the sofa, laptop perched on his thighs, well before his father re-emerged. Now this...this would take a very careful act. Stiles immediately looked up, his eyes lit up in interest, already begging his father to spill.

"What happened, dad? Are you going back to the station? Did you get a big call? Is this another animal attack or something?"

"You know I can't tell you that, kid," he said, with a tired shake of his head. "But yeah, I'm going in. It's...not good." The sheriff moved into his study, unlocking his service weapon and going to put his uniform jacket on over his civvies. Stiles followed, arms and hands gesticulating wildly as he spoke.

"You gotta let me come with you!" he exclaimed, running a hand over his buzz cut. "I'm good at seeing all the little things. Is it a robbery? A car accident? Is it a _murder?_ Is it an international diamond smuggling cartel? C'mon, gimme something to work with here!"

"No!" snapped his father, his face pulling into a scowl. "I am not bringing my teenage son to an active crime scene!"

"So it is a crime scene!" The sheriff groaned in dismay and pointed a stern forefinger at Stiles.

"You are outta line, and you know it. Now you're staying home tonight, and you're not coming with me. And you're not going to sit in your Jeep and listen to the dispatch radio, you understand? Now go upstairs, finish your homework, and I'll be home later. You get me?"

Stiles slumped, seemingly defeated. "Yeah, I get ya. Fine. But you're seriously passing up a great opportunity, here. I'm like...Sherlock Holmes. You're keeping me from my true potential."

"Your true potential wouldn't be getting a C in chemistry."

That was an effective parry, and it was Stiles' turn to scowl at his father, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

"That's only because Harris is a total dillhole," he muttered, standing easily aside as his father left his study. The sheriff had learned to not even attempt to correct Stiles' language, because all it did was encourage him to find better synonyms and Anglo-Saxon syllables.

"Don't stay up too late," the sheriff said wearily, beyond the end of his tether. "It's a school night."

And with that, he was out the front door. Stiles immediately straightened up, grabbed his laptop, and flew up the stairs two at a time, his long legs pumping and stumbling against them. He only tripped once, which was a record for him. His laptop was tossed onto his bed, and he started getting dressed. Jacket over his flannel, his hiking boots pulled on and laced up. It took him about five minutes to root around in his messy closet for his flashlight, a big metal Mag-light that had been his fifteenth birthday present. Its weight was very comforting in his hand, because he knew full well what was out there. An animal at best....a vicious murderer at worst. A vicious murderer who had the capability of vivisecting people. 

Stiles repressed a shudder as he shimmied down the tree next to his room's window. He'd learned a long time ago not to go out the front door; his neighbors were snoopy old people who needed to mind their own business. Which was richly ironic, coming from him, but hey. As he reached his Jeep, he slid into the driver's seat, hoping his nosy neighbors were all busy watching Leverage or something. Snapping the flashlight on and off to make sure the batteries were good, he popped the car into neutral, coasted backwards down his driveway, and didn't start the engine until he was straight along the road. Away from the house. That way, if anybody was looking, they'd just see him having car trouble, or something.

Stiles might have been a little paranoid. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, though.

The drive to Scott's house was surprisingly slow and sedate, because the last thing he needed was to get pulled over, or even noticed out in his Jeep. He froze a bit as a black and white screamed past him on Fourth, sirens and lights blaring, but the deputy behind the wheel thankfully didn't notice him. And no surprise, if he was on his way to a murder investigation. When he was finally in Scott's block, he found what parking he could, and strolled up to his best friend's house. And, tried and true methods of being sneaky in play, Stiles crawled up the drainpipe on the side of the house, landing lightly on the eave above the porch. (For a klutz, he sure was adept at climbing up houses...) Crab-crawling his way toward Scott's window, he saw his friend just out of the shower, pulling on a t-shirt. And then freeze.

Oh, good, Scott was having one of his paranoid episodes too. Smirking to himself, he scootched his way down to the edge of the roof, and hooked his ankles to the drain pipe. When Scott came out the front door, he was gonna swing down and scare the crap outta him. That's what best friends are for, right? He waited, suppressing the laughter bubbling up in his chest, waits until he heard the door open. One step. Two.

"HAH!"

Stiles swung down, arms out, blood rushing to his head. In the dim light of the porch, he saw Scott start to swing something big and bat-shaped at his head. His triumphant cackle quickly turned into a screech of terror, shielding himself from the impending blow to his skull. Scott was screaming too, backing off and dropping his weapon.

"Stiles! What the hell are you doing?!"

"What am I-...? Why do you have a bat?!"

"I thought you were a predator!"

"A preda-...oh my _god._ "

The two boys laughed it off, Stiles still dangling from his feet. He was getting quite the headrush from this, and honestly enjoying it.

"Okay, look, I know it's late, but you gotta hear this. I saw my dad leave twenty minutes ago. Dispatch called, they're bringing in every officer from the Beacon Hills department, and even _state police._ "

"For what?"

"Two joggers found a body in the woods."

And with that, he hauled himself up, grabbed the edge of the roof, and unhooked his ankles, dropping down with a light thump, and only a slight crackle of breaking branches. Scott blanched, leaning over the porch railing to goggle at his best friend, and look faintly ill. Scott never had the same fascination with this sort of thing that Stiles did, which was probably a good thing in the long run. Scott was sweet, naive to a fault, and so good all through that Stiles despaired of his best friend ever making his way in the real world without him.

"Wait, a dead body?"

Like that.

"No, a body of water," Stiles sighed, rolling his eyes. "Yes, dumbass! A dead body!" He climbed up over the railing to get on the same level as Scott, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

"You mean, like, murdered?"

"Nobody knows yet." He loved this, lived for it, being the one to come up with their daring schemes. Scott would follow him like a puppy wherever he led, which was why they were such good friends. Teenage boys didn't really do emotions, but there was an unspoken agreement between them. Brothers from another mother, that's all they were and always had been. So when Stiles suggested this sort of wacky shenanigan, Scott would follow. "They said it was a girl, probably in her twenties."

"Hold on," Scott said, looking confused. "If they found a body then what are they looking for?"

"That's the best part." Stiles rocked back and forward on his feet, heel to toes, stuffing his hands in his pockets and smirking. "They only found _half._ "

Scott's jaw dropped, and his eyes popped wide, and Stiles nodded with satisfaction. He knew he could count on Scott to back him up here.

"We're going."

***

The drive to the preserve was tense, but only because Stiles was focusing on the drive, and not letting his imagination run wild. Scott, on the other hand, was working his way through several logical steps that Stiles had vaulted over, as he had a tendency to do. As the lights of the Jeep swept over the preserve's sign ('No entry after dark' indeed), Stiles clicked them off and stomped on the brakes, cutting the engine. As they got out of the car, Scott pulled his lacrosse hoodie up over his head, and Stiles grabbed his Mag-light. They were as prepared as two teenagers looking for half a body could possibly be.

"Are we seriously doing this?"

"You're the one who's always bitching that nothing happens in this town," Stiles answered, cuffing Scott affectionately on the upper arm as he moved toward the forest.

"I was trying to get a good night's sleep before practice tomorrow," Scott sighed, following Stiles with much less enthusiasm. But Stiles knew his best friend, and knew that the enthusiasm would come later, when they actually accomplished their goal. They'd be the talk of the town, and the school. Popularity couldn't be far behind. They might suck out loud at lacrosse, but they could be town heroes. And wouldn't Jackson just eat his heart out at that?

"Cuz sitting on the bench is such a grueling effort," Stiles snarked, clicking the flashlight on as they tromp through the dense forest. The carpet of dead leaves and moss made a chuffing sound as they walked, but not loud enough to draw any sort of attention. Or at least, that's what Stiles hoped.

"No, because I'm playing this year," Scott pointed out, hope springing ever eternal. It took all of Stiles' self-control not to snap out a truly sarcastic reply. "In fact, I'm making first line."

Oh, hell.

"Hey, that's the spirit! Everyone should have a dream, even a pathetically unrealistic one."

Scott scoffed, because they'd had this discussion before. Scott's asthma wasn't going away. The steroids only did so much to open stubborn bronchial passages. A really vigorous sport like lacrosse was completely out of the question, and everybody knew it, but Scott wasn't giving up. He didn't do it out of a desire to be popular, but because he really wanted to play the game. He studied videos, he read strategy books, he really _tried._ Stiles had been roped into it as a result, although his motives were a bit murkier. He just wanted Lydia Martin to notice him...well, this would do the trick.

"Just out of curiosity," Scott said, changing the subject, "which half of the body are we looking for?"

That made Stiles pause for just a moment, a particular logical step he'd skipped thudding into his mind. Oh.

"Huh. I...didn't even think about that." The phone call he'd eavesdropped on hadn't included that little detail. Although if they figured the girl was in her twenties, they had to have at least a head. Oh, god, or maybe just one _side_ as opposed to top or bottom. Stiles laughed nervously, brushing off that gruesome thought as they continued their trek. Scott couldn't help his smile.

"And, uh, what if whatever killed the body is still out here?"

A beat. And Stiles nodded his head in concession to the point.

"Also something I didn't think about," he admitted, trying to sound as upbeat as possible. Surely, anything that left half a body for joggers to find would be long gone by now, right? Right? Stiles set his jaw and started climbing the hill in front of them, hands first, pointing the flashlight along their way. Scott didn't even hesitate, but started climbing up behind Stiles. He could hear the wheeze in Scott's chest as they went, and he had to slow his pace. Just a little, just enough so Scott could keep up.

"It's comforting to...know you planned this out with...your usual attention to detail," Scott gasped as they climbed.

"I know," was Stiles' answer, sounding almost proud of himself. He didn't mention the wheezing, he never did. When Scott had an asthma attack, Stiles was always the first to know. He's learned to tell the difference between a minor one and a major one. This little exercise barely blipped on the Richter scale, and so he didn't mention it, to preserve Scott's dignity. He had a mother who would cluck over him endlessly, he didn't need his best friend doing it too.

"Maybe the severe asthmatic should be the one holding the flashlight, huh?" And that was Stiles' cue to properly pause, since Scott mentioned it first; Stiles' cue to turn back and watch Scott take three quick puffs on his ever-present inhaler. So Stiles did the right thing, and handed the flashlight over when Scott caught his breath, did it with a little smirk, as if to say take the lead. So Scott was the one who set a much more sedate pace through the woods, slowly climbing. 

But not for long. As they crested the hill, Stiles heard activity. A lot of activity. The distant, low rumble of several diesel engines - firetrucks and ambulances - the sickly red-blue flashing of several police lights, the whuffling of several large police dogs as they scouted out the area. And worst of all, there were several police officers with flashlights, moving in their general direction, coming up the other side of the hill. 

Stiles reacted the fastest, hitting the ground with a massive flailing of limbs, wildly gesturing at Scott to turn off the flashlight. But Scott still had his inhaler in his other hand, and had never really been that quick on the uptake.

"Shit!"

Scott dropped both inhaler and flashlight, freezing like a deer in traffic as several bright beams converged on him. Stiles did the only thing he can think of, and rolled back down the hill. He wasn't abandoning Scott, but he also knew if Scott was caught out here alone, the hell to pay would be considerably less. If Stiles' father caught him out here, he'd be grounded for the _rest of his natural life._ Scott would get off with just a stern talking to. Both boys know this, it was standard operating procedure. If one got caught, he covered for the other. That was just how friends rolled. Stiles just hoped that Scott's lies were better this time than his usual standard. 

Bumping down the hill, Stiles took cover behind a tree, practically burying himself in the loamy undergrowth. And he could hear the yells of the deputies telling Scott to freeze (as if he hadn't already) and put his hands up. And then, oh god, his father's voice cut through the din, stomping up to Scott with his own Mag-light. Scott fortunately had the good sense to kick some leaves over his dropped items, because he knew the sheriff would recognize the light...

"Hold on, I know this little delinquent," the sheriff growled, marching up to Scott and grabbing him roughly by his hoodie. "Scott, what the hell are you doing out here? Where's Stiles?"

"Stiles? Stiles is home," Scott answered, and behind his tree, Stiles let out a long sigh of relief, pumping his fist at Scott's quick thinking. "He said something big was happening, I just wanted to come check it out."

"Uh huh." The sheriff wasn't buying it at all, and turned his attention back down the hill, and the beam of his light. Stiles flinched, and hunkered down closer to the ground. He just had to hope the angle was wrong, that the trees roots were thick enough not to let the light through and cast shadows on his pale face. He was drenched with sweat, trembling, but he'd never felt so alive. This was awesome.

"STILES!" his father yelled, sounding angrier than he ever had before. "Get out here! I know you're here!"

Silence from the forest, as if the world was holding its breath. Another long, lingering moment, and then the sheriff turned back to Scott.

"You're telling me you came out here in the middle of the night, by yourself, and Stiles didn't come with you? Or put you up to this?"

"No," Scott said, his naturally guileless tone working wonders. That was the nice thing about having a friend who was so naturally good, when he lied it was super effective. Stiles was going to give him any X-Box game he wanted after tonight's work. "I swear, he just texted me, told me you were checking something out in the forest, and that he was going to bed. So I thought I'd come look."

"Uh huh. Well. We're gonna go back to the parking lot, and if I see his Jeep there, I'm going to put you both in the cells overnight."

Oh. Shit. 

As Scott was frog-marched away, diverting thousands of dollars in county resources, Stiles was trying not to panic. Okay, if the ambulances and trucks were here, then they came in the north entrance of the preserve, and not the west entrance, where his Jeep was. That meant that they had to get back to the cars, exit to the highway, drive three miles down the road, circle the lake, and come back. 

He had fifteen minutes, maybe less, to hike back to his Jeep and get the hell out of here. And he couldn't go anywhere until he heard no movement from the deputies. Which cut his fifteen minutes down to seven, ten if he was lucky. He tried to judge mentally how far he and Scott had come: time and aching calf muscles estimated at least a mile. And he didn't dare try to find his flashlight right now. He had no time to waste.

When silence finally fell, Stiles _moved._ He was stumbling through the undergrowth as quickly as he could, hoping to god he wasn't making too much noise. For all he knew, his father had posted a deputy at the top of the hill to watch for him, it was the kind of sneaky, underhanded thing he'd do. Deeper into the forest he ran, pretty sure he was going in the right direction. Until he came to a clearing he'd never seen before. It was almost beautiful, in the light of the waxing moon. Silvery and grey and silent, ringed on all sides by large oak and pine trees. In spite of his haste, he paused, blinking slightly. He had a keen eye for beautiful things, after all, as his long crush on Lydia attested. So this fairy circle in the middle of the preserve grabbed his scattered attention, just for one second.

That one second was enough. There was a slight tremor under his feet, and a distant crackling of breaking branches to his left. He spun, confused, and then let out an unmanly shriek as dozens of fear-crazed deer burst into the clearing. He didn't even have time to run, he just hit the dirt and curled into a ball, throwing his arms up over his head. He was kicked repeatedly, nearly trampled by the herd. He was a sobbing mess by the time they passed, gasping for air. When he finally sat up, he was trembling. Okay. This adrenaline rush was now officially not fun anymore. He was staring around, trying to figure out what had spooked Bambi and his friends...when he saw it.

A pair of gleaming red eyes peered at him through the darkness, glinting with the moonlight. In the gloom, Stiles could just about make out the shape of an enormous beast, on all fours. But it was shaped all wrong, more humanoid than canine or ursine, with knees and elbows that bent the right way round. And it had no tail. Not that that was indicative of anything, but it was still horribly weird and terrifying. All this hit Stiles in a flash, a brief instant of sheer mortal terror. And then, with a low, unearthly growl, the thing sprang at him.

Stiles screamed, tried to scramble away, but his natural clumsiness was definitely not cute anymore, not in this life or death situation. He felt himself hit something about shin-height, and then he was sprawled out on a flat, wooden surface. A table? Here? What the hell?

No. A giant tree trunk. He was flat on his back on a giant tree trunk, and a bear the size of a freight train was pouncing on him. With one last helpless scream, Stiles closed his eyes and tried to roll away. But the creature, whatever it was, was faster. The pain of the bite was like nothing he'd ever felt before, sharp, jagged teeth tearing into his side. He screamed again, in pain, in agony, and got one hand against...something. Something hard, and covered with matted fur. He pushed with all his strength and kept rolling, his hand landing on a branch. A root. Something heavy and wooden, like a club, at least. His fingers curled around it, as the world slowed to a crawl. He remembered his father's words on self-defense, taught to him over many patient and trying years. _Don't hesitate. Use whatever you can to defend yourself. Fight dirty. Don't worry about honor or keeping score. If somebody's attacking you, go right for the vulnerable points. The groin, the eyes, the armpits. Jab with your fingers stiff, use your knees and elbows. It's about incapacitating them so you can get away. You're not there to win, just to get away. Got it?_

Yeah, dad. I got it. Even if you had no idea I'd apply this to a literal bear.

With a guttural growl, Stiles pushed up from the ground as hard as he could, using his momentum to swing his club. It arced in slow motion, every second indelibly imprinted on his memory for the rest of his life. He could even see what looked like _surprise_ on the bestial face as his makeshift weapon connected with its skull.

The thing yelped like a dog and spun away from him, landing on all fours in the leaves. Stiles scrambled to his feet, stood his ground, holding the club like a baseball bat. He knew if he ran, the beast would be on him again in a second, its hunting instinct roused. The adrenaline was really flowing now, he couldn't even feel the pain from the bite in his side. Fight or flight had definitely kicked in, and he was hellishly surprised that the former option won. Him, the skinny nerd with an Adderall dependency, was facing down a rabid bear in the woods in the middle of the night. Panting helplessly, he waited for the next attack...and was surprised as hell when it didn't come. The beast hesitated, staggered back shaking its muzzle, like a dog whacked with a rolled-up newspaper on the nose. Another step back. And another. And then it was gone, bounding off into the woods as silently as it had appeared.

For several more moments, Stiles stood there, still waiting for the attack to come, but it never did. Slowly, he lowered his aching arms, uncurled his stiff fingers from the branch. He hadn't realized how heavy it was until now, when the adrenaline finally gave up and abandoned him. All the strength ebbed out of him, and he was left swallowing a mouth full of sour-tasting saliva. He was filthy, he was shaking, he'd been bitten, but he was still alive, and not a snack for fucking Yogi. In a daze, he staggered away from the scene of the crime, one hand pressed over his wound. He could feel the blood dripping down his side as he walked, pooling uncomfortably in his waistband. His shirt was sodden with blood, too, torn where the teeth had gotten him. In spite of himself, Stiles started laughing, and it was only tinged with a slight edge of hysteria. He was still laughing when he finally stumbled onto the main road, his side aching with it. 

So of course when the SUV barreling down the road just barely missed him, that was funny too. Was everything in the universe out to kill him tonight? Was this his punishment for a life of terrible behavior? Probably. His karma was definitely catching up with him tonight. But now he knew where he was, the parking lot was literally five hundred feet up the road. So he walked, still laughing to himself, before tilting his head up to the heavens.

"Thanks," he said, his voice still rich with black humor. "Seriously, thanks. I'm gonna remember this night. You've got a lot of explaining to do."

He wasn't even surprised when he rounded the final corner of the road, to see his father's patrol car parked right behind his Jeep. Welp.

" _Stiles..._ " his father began, turning his flashlight on his errant boy. But then the sheriff gasped, and Stiles looked down at himself. The blood had soaked through his blue shirt, turning it a hideous greenish-black. Like he was a fucking lobster or something. Lobsters had blue blood, Hemocyanin. So did horseshoe crabs. Wikipedia strikes again. It belatedly occurred to Stiles that he was getting a little light-headed. Understandable, he'd lost a lot of blood.

"Daddy...?"

And then it all went black.


	2. Chapter 2

Come the dawn.

Beacon Hills High School was a busy, bustling place at 7:36 in the morning. The busses all rolled up, the cars lined up in a traffic-snarling row, dozens of low-end and dinged “starter” cars slid into empty parking spaces. Teenagers milled about, clustering into groups, like atoms drawn into molecules, a few eccentric electrons hovering around the tight nucleus of the popular. There were dozens of lacrosse sticks stuffed through shoulder loops, a forest of white netting bouncing above the heads of the jocks.

Scott rolled up on his bike, pedalling faster than usual, jamming the front wheel into the rack and locking it up sloppily. His head jerked around, looking for one particular buzz-cut in the sea of floppy-haired teens. And he barely felt a twinge in his lungs, so that was a good sign; his too-fast ride to school hadn’t made him seize up.

“C’mon, Stiles, where are you?” he muttered to himself, pulling his helmet off and shaking his hair off his sticky forehead. Somebody in the parking lot was playing a Taylor Swift song at top volume, and there was some loud, shrill laughter, some screaming, a few jocular insults of bros shit-talking bros. But still no Stiles. He’d texted Scott at four in the morning, saying he was coming to school that day, promise, and yeah, hospitals suck as much as he remembered, and his mom said hi and to go back to sleep now. But Scott hadn’t been able to sleep after that, since Stiles’ text hadn’t actually included any information about _how he was doing._ Scott wondered about the way Stiles’ brain worked sometimes, he really did. He glanced at his watch; 7:45. The first bell would ring in eleven minutes, and then Stiles would be officially late. Or officially not coming. Either option meant that Scott would also be either officially late or officially not coming. Because if Stiles was still in the hospital that morning, Scott was going to skip and bike his ass the thirteen miles to the hospital. No other option.

But then, through the throngs of Honda Accords and Toyota Prius and Jackson’s stupid Porsche, the Sheriff’s cruiser parted the traffic, like a shark through a school of very tasty and self-preserving fish. Traffic happened to people other than the sheriff of the county, after all. Scott saw Stiles swing himself out of the back seat, and he let out a huge sigh of relief, hustling over to his best friend’s side.

Last night had been the worst night of his life, and that was including the night his father walked out. The adventure in and of itself wasn’t so bad, but seeing Stiles come around the corner, soaked in blood, and then passing out, had sent Scott into a frenzied panic. He’d actually shoved Sheriff Stilinski aside to be the one to scoop Stiles up, and haul him into the back seat of the cruiser. Everything after that had been a blur of flashing lights, sirens, confusion at the hospital’s check-in desk, his mother putting a soothing hand on his shoulder as they wheeled Stiles into the OR. And yet, through all of that, Scott hadn’t blamed Stiles, not once. There wasn’t a single thought of _‘this is all your fault!’_ in Scott’s head, and there never would be. He just wasn’t wired that way, and Stiles appreciated that to the bottom of his black little heart. Because Stiles knew that there was a lot to blame him for, in this life.

Stiles ducked his head bashfully when Scott ran up to him, and there was some neck scratching as they stepped back from the cruiser. No hugging. They were teenage boys, hugging wasn’t allowed, especially not here in front of their school. They did, however, no-bro fist, Stiles going for the high five, Scott going for the fist bump, and somehow making it work.

“Have a good day, son,” the sheriff called from behind the wheel, giving Stiles a faint, concerned nod and smile. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“Yeah, dad, I’m good,” Stiles said, shrugging a little bit, as if shrugging off everything that had happened, desperate to get back to normal. “I’ll be fine. Education first, right?”

“Yeah. Call me if you need anything.” And with that, the sheriff pulled away again, leaving Scott and Stiles on their own. The boys started walking up the path, re-shouldering their impossibly heavy backpacks and lacrosse sticks.

“Dude, seriously, you okay?” Scott asked as they walked, and Stiles just shrugged again, snorting a bit with wry laughter.

“Dude, I got _no_ sleep. After they stitched me up, I had to get a blood transfusion _and_ a rabies shot, neither of which were my favorite things in the world. But aside from almost being eaten alive, I’m good. I’m actually feeling okay. I’ll probably crash later in a spectacular fashion, but right now, I’m fine.”

Scott let out a sigh of relief, and nodded, smiling to himself. Stiles might be lying about being fine, but that was SOP. If he was upright, walking, and mouthing off, everything would eventually get back to normal.

“Can I see it?”

In answer to that, Stiles lifted up his shirt on the left hand side. A swath of bandages was immediately apparent, barely bled through, white and pale yellow and pink. Scott whistled softly, as Stiles peeled aside the gauze to reveal his bite mark. It was perfect half-moon of teeth along his torso, bright copper-red along the pale white of his skin. It had been expertly stitched up, black-blue thread criss-crossing over the wound. And Scott looked appropriately ill and impressed all at once.

“Dude. That’s hard core.”

Stiles laughed and lowered his shirt. “Right? The bear wanted a taste of the Stiles, but I ain’t for snacking on. Unless you’re Lydia Martin, she can snack on me whenever she wants.”

And Scott paused, staring up at Stiles with a frown.

“A bear?”

Stiles frowned back at Scott, his entire face falling. 

“Of course a bear. What the hell else could it be, dude?”

“A wolf.”

The two best friends stared each other down for a moment, as the other students cascaded into the school, moments away from the main bell.

“A wolf? Scott, that’s impossible.” Stiles gave his best friend a skeptical look, trying to figure out where his head was at, a tricky proposition at the best of times. But Scott just set his jaw stubbornly. 

“No, seriously, I heard a howling wolf when your dad hauled me into his patrol car.”

Now Stiles wasn’t the king of Wikpedia for nothing, and he crossed his arms over his chest as he faced Scott. He’d had his own pet theories about what happened last night, and there was very little which would shake him loose. Although he was willing to hear Scott out. Barely. There was one major scientific fact he had to state first.

“Scott, there aren’t any wolves in California.”

Scott looked nonplussed, his adorable face pouting in confusion. A look Scott frequently around Stiles, to be honest. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been a bear that got you, then. There aren’t any bears either, right?”

Stiles let out another sigh, resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands. Scot was too pure for this world, too good.

“Yeah there are, Scott. Thousands of them, actually. All over.”

“Oh. Wait, really?” Scott looked horrified and intrigued by that, which just made Stiles feel like an even bigger tool, but that didn’t stop him from nodding.

“Yeah. Seriously. Lots of bears.”

The boys faced each other for a long moment, and there was a silent conversation as they figured everything out. Stiles had been through hell and back last night, and Scott was determined to keep everything normal, which was a hell of a concept. So there was no problem as they got on the same page, and silently agreed to never speak of this again.

“I swear I heard a wolf.”

Or maybe not. Stiles internally gave up, turning and walking toward the front door of the school. Scott tagged along behind, as always, but at least he’d given up on trying to convince Stiles that he’d been bitten by an impossible animal. 

“We didn’t even find the body,” Scott groused as they made their way to homeroom.

“Not surprising, considering,” Stiles answered, his shoulders bouncing. “I mean, if what happened to me happened to her? Then she probably got eaten.”

“Oh, gross, dude!” Scott’s nose wrinkled up in distaste, as he pondered the truth of that theory.

“Right? Chalk it up to Beacon Hills and its never-ending animal attacks. Seriously, this is gonna make national news, it’s the best thing to happen to this town since….”

Stiles cut himself off, because a certain strawberry blonde goddess was flouncing by him, headed down the hall. His brain instantly changed tracks, his entire focus on the object of his long-standing obsession. The smell of her perfume was particularly strong today, and it made Stiles swoon a little. He really did turn into an idiot when it came to her.

“...Since the birth of Lydia Martin!” he finished loudly, just as the girl brushed past him. “Hey, Lydia, you’re looking good today, like you’re…”

And then she was gone. She hadn’t even turned her head to look at him, acknowledge that he was calling her name. It was as if he didn’t exist, totally invisible and outside of her universe. Which wasn’t too far from the truth, frankly. He jutted his chin out and winced, shaking off her rejection like water off a duck’s back.

“Like you’re totally gonna ignore me.” He turned to Scott, pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re the cause of this, you know. Dragging me down to your nerd depths.” 

Ah, this old game. “Uh huh,” Scott agreed, rolling his eyes.

“I’m a nerd by association,” Stiles continued. “I’ve been Scarlet Nerded by you.” Scott just laughed, steering Stiles into their homeroom English class just as the final bell rang.

And Stiles’ head felt like it was gonna explode. The ringing of the bell was agonizing, pounding against his ear drums, impossibly loud. Stiles flinched bodily and flung his hands up over his ears, trying to block out the noise. Mercifully, it was over in seconds, but it left Stiles with one hell of a headache, first thing in the morning. He was attracting a few stares from the class, but nothing above and beyond the usual. Scott, though, was looking worried. He knew the difference between Stiles at his baseline klutzy body language, and genuine distress.

“You okay?” he asked as they sat down.

“Yeah, I guess. Did they turn the volume up on those things last night?” Stiles grumbled, sticking his forefinger in his ear and giving it a wiggle. Wow, that hurt, son of a bitch.

“No,” answered Scott. “Same as yesterday, man.”

“I doubt that, that was stupid loud, I’m gonna call in the state inspector and shut this place down.”

“You do that.”

Stiles kept massaging his ear as their teacher stepped into the room, yawning exaggeratedly to make his ears pop and release the tension. It was weird, his ears felt so sensitive right now, like after that jolt of the bell, they were overcompensating. Every little rustle of paper, every squeak and squeal of pencil and chalk, every cough or sniffle or gulp felt magnified by a thousand, a million times. Of course, that made his overactive brain start rabbiting down a new path. Maybe he was going into shock. Sure, delayed shock, but that could happen sometimes. The adrenaline flooding his body had obviously put a keen but dangerous edge on his senses, giving him enough warning that he was about to keel over like a fainting goat. Wouldn’t that just be a thing? Surviving an animal-of-unknown-origin bite, a night at the hospital, including blood transfusions and rabies shots, and a very stern and worried father, just to go into shock ten hours later. Huh. That did seem a little long, now that he thought about it. Shock was usually immediate, right? Oh, crap, what if he was having a delayed reaction to the shots? What if his body was rejecting the blood? It’s not like his type was rare or anything, but maybe there was an antibody in the donated plasma that had missed the screening…

Stiles knew way too much about certain medical procedures. But he was jolted out of his morbid thoughts by the teacher addressing the class.

“As you all know, there indeed was a body found in the woods last night.”

Scott turned to Stiles, who tipped his friend a little wink. Yeah, they definitely knew that. A body, and worse.

“And I am sure your… _eager_ little minds are coming up with various macabre scenarios to what happened.”

The whole time the teacher spoke, he was facing the whiteboard, writing the words **KAFKA’S METAMORPHOSIS** in big block letters. Stiles noticed that his hand trembled as he wrote. His hands, and his voice. Huh. So this really did have all the authorities super spooked. Interesting. 

“But I am here to tell you that the police have a suspect in custody.”

Stiles’ jaw dropped. That was patently absurd, and he could hear the lie in the man’s voice, even if he already knew the facts. It was weird, there was just some indefinable feeling in the air as the man spoke, and the entire class shifted uncomfortably. Subconsciously. But to Stiles, it felt as if there was a giant neon sign over Mr. Greene’s head, blinking on and off, the word “LIAR” in forty point bold Verdana. Scott shot Stiles a disbelieving look, which Stiles just shook his head at. Not now, dude.

“Which means, you can give your undivided attention to the syllabus, which is on your desk, outlining the semester.”

A few half-hearted groans sounded through the class, as they all picked up the syllabus in question and started reading over it. Stiles didn’t bother for a moment, though. He was still too busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on with him right now. First the loud bell, now the secure _knowing_ of the teacher’s lie. Something strange was happening to him, and it was making him panic, just a little. Why tell the obvious lie to _the sheriff’s kid_ , who’d been in the woods last night, knew there was no arrest made? There was no suspect, unless they managed to haul in Fozzie’s psychotic cousin in special ursine cuffs.

Was it a bear? Or was it something else?

And that was when the cell phone went off. Stiles ignored it for the first ring, and then looked up for the second one. No student in the class was moving to grab their phone. And the weird part was, it wasn’t a special ring tone: It was one of those built-in chirps that only boring adults used. And yet Mr. Greene wasn’t reaching for his phone either. In fact, he didn’t even seem to hear it, because if he had, he’d be glaring around at his students like Stiles was. 

This was officially getting bizarre.

Chance brought his gaze to the window, and what was outside. A girl he’d never seen before was digging through a floppy leather bag, rummaging for...her phone. She pressed a button, and Stiles heard the beep. The ringing stopped. She held the phone up to her ear. And Stiles just stared.

“ _Mom, three calls on my first day is a little overdoing it._ ”

He could only see the girl in profile, but he could see her lips moving, forming those words he was hearing. Hearing through the window of his classroom. From where she was sitting over one hundred feet away. Outside the school. That this was patently impossible didn’t seem to enter into it; Stiles heard it as clearly as if she was sitting immediately next to him. His heart started racing along with his mind, trying to parse what was happening, even as the rest of the class focused on their syllabus.

_”Everything except a pen…! Oh my god, I didn’t actually forget a pen.”_

How was this possible? Nobody except maybe Superman could hear this sort of conversation from hundreds of feet away, through a closed window. He snapped his eyes back down to his desk, willing this loud, loud, _loud_ girl to stop talking, already.

_”Okay, okay. Gotta go. Love ya.”_

Another subtle bleep, and the girl hung up, just as the assistant principal walked up to her. Which Stiles didn’t notice at all, nope. He had his eyes on his syllabus. And not on the pretty girl outside the school whom he could inexplicably hear. He glanced at Scott, who was absorbed in his reading, his lips moving silently as he took in the reading list. Sweet, delicate Scott, who had some minor...issues with learning.

 _”Sorry to keep you waiting,”_ the vice principal said, as the girl stood up and followed him. _”So, you were saying San Francisco isn’t where you grew up?_ ”

Stiles frowned to himself, pulling out his notebook and pen to take notes. If they were going to focus on Kafka this semester, he was going to be prepared with the most epic of essays, which might even stay on topic this time. Loud, impossible conversations didn’t faze him. He was trying everything he could to tune it all out, gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw ached. But still the banal conversation went on, regardless of his attempts.

_”No, but we lived there for more than a year, which is unusual for my family.”_

Shut up shut up shut uuuuuuup…

_”Well, hopefully Beacon Hills will be your last stop for a while.”_

God, something was very wrong with him, apparently. That bear bite had given him superpowers, like something out of a Marvel comic. And this power was going to clearly drive him bonkers, if he could hear things like this from miles and miles away. Maybe he’d be Bear Boy, and get a spandex uniform. (No capes, though. Edna Mode was very clear on that point.) And then, the door to the classroom opened. As one, the entire class looked up, taking in the new girl. Up close, Stiles could objectively admit that she was beautiful (even if she was stupid loud). Heart-shaped face, long brown curls, endearing dimples and a body that just wouldn’t stop. Underneath the sound of the opening door, Stiles could barely hear a rhythmic thump-thump that he couldn’t pinpoint the source of.

“Class, this is our new student: Allison Argent. Please do your best to make her feel welcome.”

That subsonic tempo suddenly sped up, and Stiles swallowed against a dry throat. That was when it hit him: he was hearing somebody’s heart beat. The lopsided rhythm had sped up when Allison entered the room, and he glanced over at Scott to get his attention. Which wasn’t going to work, since Scott was completely and totally and absolutely staring at Allison. Stiles had known his best friend for ten years, they’d been closer than brothers. So he knew, he _knew_ that Scott was now one hundred percent crushing on this beautiful new girl - and that it was Scott’s heart beat he was hearing.

Allison Argent sat down behind Scott, much to the boy’s gobsmacked astonishment. He half-turned in his seat, as if to say a warm hello, but Allison’s attention was back on her bag. Stiles thought fast, his stock-in-trade, and scribbled out a quick note which he slid into Scott’s hand.

`Offer her a pen.`

As Allison kept digging through her bag, Scott read the note with no small amount of confusion, glancing at Stiles for confirmation. Stiles nodded eagerly, quickly, before jerking his head at the new girl. Do it. Trust me, dude. 

Taking a deep breath, Scott reached into his bag, plucked out a pen, and turned around in his seat. Allison looked up, and then looked confused. Stiles smirked to himself as she reached out and took the pen from Scott’s fingers, wondering how he knew.

“...Thanks,” she said, her tone soft and friendly, even as a large smile brightened up her face. Scott smiled back, totally smitten and helpless in the face of this gorgeous girl talking to him. He turned back around, a hot blush on his cheeks, and Stiles couldn’t help but snicker to himself. He was the best super-hearing wingman in the history of the world, thank you very much!

“We’ll begin with Kafka’s Metamorphosis on page 133…” the teacher intoned, which told Stiles that he could immediately tune it out. This was going to be a ‘symbolism’ class, as opposed to an ‘actually read the book’ class. Which meant if he got the Cliff’s Notes, he’d pass with flying colors, letting him give his attention to more important matters. Like this weird new girl, Scott’s immediate infatuation with her, and how the hell Stiles was able to hear her voice at impossible distances.

***

Stiles followed Scott to his locker after class, watching Scott watch Allison. Her locker was, coincidentally, just across the hall and down a bit, so that was certain to guarantee the maximum amount of teen angst and pining. At least Lydia and Jackson had their lockers around the corner, so Stiles never had to deal with their PDA. He was already laying bets with himself, whether or not Scott would get up the courage to ask this new girl out. Ten to one he’d chicken out, twenty to one he’d go through with it, one hundred to one that she’d say yes. (Stiles loved Scott. Stiles also understood Scott’s very real limitations.) Allison smiled at them both, shy and unsure. He was about to tell Scott to go for it...when Lydia crossed the hall.

Scott and Stiles both stared at the girls, mouths hanging slightly open, both of them living a fantasy life somewhere quietly in their heads. They were hormonal teenage boys, after all; all that pretty made them go utterly speechless.

“That jacket is absolutely killer,” Lydia said, approaching and appraising Allison with a knowing glance, up and down with an approving nod. Allison’s attention was jerked from the two staring boys to the redhead, and Stiles huffed impatiently. He could still hear every syllable, even through the noisy hall. “Where’d you get it?”

“My mom was a buyer for a boutique back in San Francisco,” Allison answered Lydia, waving off her praise with an embarrassed shrug.

“And _you_ are my new best friend!” Lydia declared, pointing at Allison with a possessive grin. Stiles snorted, rolling his eyes at Scott, who was still staring at Allison. It took Stiles digging his elbow into Scott’s side to get his attention, which was for the best, since Jackson grabbed Lydia from behind and started kissing her neck. A sight to make anybody sick.

“She’s so beautiful,” Scott murmured, turning back to his locker, not having heard a word of their conversation. Stiles shrugged. As far as he was concerned, Lydia was absolutely the most gorgeous girl in the world, and nobody else could compare.

“She’s cute, yeah,” he agreed, tilting his head thoughtfully. Of course, now that he was thinking about it, Allison might be his in with Lydia. Clearly she liked Scott, if the way she smiled at him was any indication. So Allison and Scott hook up, Scott’s invited into Lydia’s inner-circle, Stiles comes along for the ride...yeah. That could work. He decided right then and there that he was going to do everything in his power to get Scott and Allison together. That this was profoundly manipulative and kinda creepy didn’t faze him in the least. Sometimes you just had to get a little underhanded to get what you wanted. His mind raced as he pondered all the possible implications, and possible ways to make it all go down. 

He could hear Jackson talking about a party on Friday night (the one only the popular kids got an official invite to, and half the school would show up for anyway). Stiles had always operated on the principle of tuning out every single obnoxious word that came out of Jackson Whittemore’s mouth, since his tolerance level for the sound of whiny farts was very low. But Lydia always had his immediate attention. And when Lydia and Jackson pulled Allison off to their next class, Stiles smirked to himself. Because they had made a point of telling her to come to lacrosse practice.

Perfect.

“Okay, can somebody tell me why new girl is here for all of two minutes, and she’s already part of Lydia Martin’s clique?”

That was from their friend Lauryn, leaning up next to Scott’s locker, clutching her history textbook and shooting dagger glares at Lydia and Allison’s retreating backs. Stiles just smirked and shrugged.

“Beautiful people. They flock together, you know?”

And Scott blushed clear to his hairline.

***

If there was one thing Stiles was good at, it was paying attention.

Not just observing, though. Any old fool could observe. Hell, most people observed just fine. It was the final sum of observations that made all the difference in the world. This was why eyewitness accounts were mostly discarded in criminal trials, because in high-stress situations, the human mind took what was observed and basically fucked it up. The best case scenario was somebody who had a general gist of what had actually happened; most people got a mish-mashed jumble of crap, confused and incoherent.

No, what Stiles excelled in was taking what he’d noticed and putting together the pieces in a way that made _sense._ A skill he’d inherited from his father, but it was his mother’s quiet patience that taught him how to see it as useful.

_My sweet baby boy, you see so much. Tell me what you see. Describe it all to me, I want to hear it._

So he learned to put it together for his mother, telling her stories of all the amazing things he’d seen and heard through the filter of his seven year old brain. When he was diagnosed as attention deficit and hyperactive, it just made his mother smile softly, knowingly. And when she was diagnosed with the disease that eventually killed her, he became her eyes and ears and mouth, telling her the world until it was lost to her forever.

The problem was that those same observational skills didn’t really apply to his own self. Stiles was many things, but open and honest about the state of his own emotional and physical well-being wasn’t one of them. 

So getting through the rest of the school day was a long lesson in learning to pay attention to the warning signals his body was giving him. The super-hearing was just the start. At one point, his eyes went slightly blurry in his geometry class, the white board with its red triangles and bisected angles in blue shifting into a swimming mess. He blinked several times, his eyes brimming over with tears, before it cleared up again. That was a class he didn’t share with Scott, so nobody even noticed his distress. He spent several moments wiping his eyes against the back of his sleeve, leaving a wet spot that dried slowly.

In history, his sense of smell went into overdrive. He was just thankful it didn’t happen in the cafeteria, frankly. It was an assault: Axe body spray, Victoria’s Secret Pink sparkle perfume sticks, rubber erasers tanging against paper, the petrochemical squeal of dry erase markers, deodorant and minty gum and stale body odor. He had to breathe through his mouth for the rest of the period, which only made him taste all of the above too. He was green by the time he escaped to the relatively fresh air of the hallway.

Then, disaster. Chemistry. His least favorite class of the day, taught by that enormous cockbite Harris. Stiles swore blind that if you looked up ‘enormous cockbite’ in the dictionary, Harris’ picture was next to the entry. This was the class he needed all his wits about him for, the class that seemed designed to stunt the growth of his delicate brain. And of course that’s when his meds wore off.

Not just the painkillers the hospital had given him (which had been great, by the way), but his Adderall. He could feel himself slowing down, the transmission of his mind dropping into a lower gear, and then bottoming out of the car entirely. It wasn’t the kind of exhaustion that led to sleep, but an all over body ache, mainly concentrated in the space between his temples. It was bad, really bad, he’d never had an Adderall crash like this in his life. But like _hell_ was he going to give Harris the satisfaction of asking to go to the nurse. Fortunately, Scott was in this class with him, and Scott would be there to save his bacon. Hopefully.

“Dude, you okay?” Scott asked in an undertone, sliding onto the high stool at the lab bench they shared.

“I was bitten by a maybe bear,” Stiles snarked back, as the class settled in before the bell. “My meds are...done. I’m crashing.”

“Shit.” Scott said that loud enough for the whole class to turn and look at him, although he didn’t notice. But...

“Language, Mr. McCall!”

Of course that was when Harris entered the room, prissy little shoes clicking against the linoleum, prissy little briefcase slapping against his prissy little thigh.

“Sorry, Mr. Harris.”

And Stiles had to smile, because Scott had basically gotten the crosshairs on his forehead for the afternoon. Harris loved to pick one student per class to belittle, bully, and basically be, yes, an enormous fucking cockbite at. It was like he had a lottery system in place. The first month, it was done in alphabetical order. The second month, by the color of a student’s hair. Then, just before Christmas break, the order seemed to be based on the student’s astrological sign, although Stiles wasn’t one hundred percent sure on that one. Now, new semester, Harris seemed to be going entirely at random, unless there was some outlying behavior. So...Scott would get the treatment, and Stiles would hopefully remain unscathed. Even if it took all his effort just to keep his head up and his eyes open.

About twenty minutes into the class, though, Stiles realized he wasn’t going to be so lucky.

“Am I boring you, Mr. Stilinski?”

Stiles shook himself out of his mental fog, swallowing against a dry mouth and pounding headache. He shook his head in denial, blinking rapidly to fight off the heavy feeling in his lids.

“Nope. Just...sorry.”

“So will you answer my question?”

Stiles went very still, not daring to look at Scott for a cue. He’d played this game with Harris before, after all, and knew the answer. Well, the only answer his self-respect would let him get away with.

“I just did. No, you’re not boring me.”

That prompted a snicker from the rest of the class, and a flat, disbelieving look from Harris. Stiles knew how the end game would go. Harris would move him away from Scott, and then assign him a detention. But then, that enormous cockbite put a new spin on the game.

“Thank you for your sparkling contribution to the class, Mieczyslaw.”

Harris was apparently the only teacher in Stiles’ educational history who knew how to pronounce his given name. Stiles felt the blush start hot at his collar, sweeping away his exhaustion, burning him up with rank humiliation. Everybody knew not to call him that. Teachers that tried gave up after the first syllable, unable to get their tongues around the C, the Z and the Y all in one sound. The entire class started laughing, laughing at him as they hadn’t laughed since second grade, when Heather finally coined his nickname. Stiles felt his hands bunch into fists as Harris turned his back on him, the final insult. Red descended over his vision, and Stiles had the uncontrollable urge to march up to that...enormous. _Fucking. **COCKBITE.**_ And rip his throat out with the tip of his overused red ballpoint pen.

Until he felt Scott’s hand on his wrist. Scott’s hand, warm and steady, holding him back and calming him down. The blood thundering and pulsing in his ears retreated, to be replaced with the slow lub-lub of that heart beat he’d heard earlier. Scott’s heart beat.

The laughter died down, and so did the stares, as the class continued. Stiles took several long, shaking breaths in through his nose, his over worked senses ignored in the face of his embarrassment and calming rage. He finally looked at Scott, who was staring at him with large puppy eyes. Scott was clearly worried about him, but didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to say a word, it was all right there in the look they shared.

And his fists slowly unclenched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Thank you all so much for the comments and kudos, I really do appreciate them all. I'm going to try for an update once every ten to fourteen days. And yes, this is going to span the ENTIRE first season. I'm insane, considering that two chapters and 10K words in and I'm only twenty minutes into the first episode. What am I doing send help.
> 
> Oh, and I also went back and edited my tense-switching in the first chapter. Inexcusable, I know.


	3. Chapter 3

Allison wasn’t exactly sure what to think about Lydia.

It was the first time in seven schools that Allison had been approached on her first day. It was the first time in seven schools that somebody had declared her ‘their new best friend.’ And it was definitely the first time in seven schools that she’d been complimented on her wardrobe. Especially after San Francisco. Everybody in that school, in that town, was incredibly fashionable, well-groomed, perfect. The children of the yippies and tech-geeks of the city were crueler than any other kids she’d ever met. She’d had to adapt to their ways, begging her mom for an entirely new wardrobe her freshman year, even if her immediate instinct was jeans and hiking boots and loose-fitting shirts. The gawky freshman, a full year older than her classmates, had taken a crash-course in makeup, clothing, how to curl her hair with a flat iron. Eighth grade in Cleveland hadn’t been anywhere near as competitive, as cruel and caustic and shallow.

And yes, her mother was a private shopper. That part wasn’t a lie. The problem was, her mother was a private shopper for a _gun wholesaler._ And Allison knew too well what would happen if her peers knew that. Either they’d turn on her and be afraid of her, or the real weirdos would start asking her to smuggle them weapons. So she’d crafted several careful lies over the years. Mom shopped. Dad was in sales. Both true, both not the whole truth. It had actually been her Aunt Kate who’d finally stepped in. Aunt Kate who’d given her three thousand dollars, some gentle advice, and a ride to the mall. It was Kate who’d picked most of her wardrobe, in that three days she’d been in town. Her visits were always brief, exciting, and bittersweet. Allison loved Kate with all her heart, the wild and carefree woman who was close to her own age, who always took time to encourage her, who always had some new and exotic story to tell.

Kate was really the only one who understood what Allison was going through. Her parents were always going on about loyalty and close family ties and sacrifice and not telling people their business. Secretive, that was it, her parents were always very secretive. Allison had soaked up that attitude as a small child, and so as a result, she never complained. Never complained about how lonely she was, how embarrassed, how much she struggled with fitting in. (The added humiliation of having to repeat her sixth grade year was just a bonus.) Kate was the only one who ever heard about Allison’s troubles and real feelings. And if Kate occasionally scared the crap out of Allison with some sudden hard look, well, Kate was under a lot of stress. She really was. A lot.

So, anyway. The whole point of Beacon Hills was to get the family back to a smaller town. Mom and dad had met here, after all. This was as close to a home town as the Argents got (aside from the chateau in Reims). They even had a house here, standing empty for six years. Allison vaguely remembered the town. She’d been eleven the last time they’d stopped here, for one summer only when school was out. And she vaguely recalled that there was something really bad happening. Her grandfather had even stopped by late one night when she was supposed to be asleep, talking with Kate in the kitchen. Their voices were all kept low, and Allison couldn’t make out any of it. Grandfather Gerard was gone by the next morning. He hadn’t even said hello to her. She got the impression at the time that some deal of Aunt Kate’s had gone wrong, and she was in legal trouble, and Gerard was there to help. But nothing seemed to come of it afterward, and that was that. By the time the new school year started, Allison and her parents had moved again, that time to Albuquerque. 

And now, on her first day back at school in Beacon Hills, she’d been claimed as a best friend.

She really shouldn’t feel so good about that. She didn’t even know Lydia. And yet, Allison Argent was so desperately lonely, that for once, just _once_ , she’d like to belong. She’d like to be a part of something. She’d like to have a circle of friends, rather than a couple of nodding acquaintances. She’d like to actually be social, rather than spending her life on an archery range. She’d like to spend at least some of her school days doing typical teenager things, like going to parties and prom. Of course, when Jackson had suggested that she join them at a party on Friday, Allison had choked. She’d gone right for the immediate lie of family night, her standard excuse. Because that was a bit too soon. There was going to parties, and then there was jumping in feet first. She wouldn’t know hardly anybody else by Friday, and if she wasn’t careful she’d end up the third wheel, awkwardly standing in the kitchen with nobody to talk to. Although maybe not, because there was also that really cute boy who’d handed her a pen in English.

She didn’t even know his name. But halfway through history class, she blushed quietly to herself just thinking about him. She really, really needed to get his name. There was something absolutely compelling about him, with those puppy-brown eyes.

She daydreamed so long that she was caught off guard by her teacher calling on her to answer a question. Oops. She set her jaw and focused on her work again, determined to untangle the knot of her new social standing later.

Later came at lunch time. Allison had expected Lydia to be surrounded by a bevy of similarly popular girls, all groomed precisely the same, all in similar clothes. But surprisingly enough, it was just Lydia alone on a picnic bench outside, nibbling on a kale salad and patting the seat next to her as an invitation. Allison figured that Lydia had told the rest of her clique to give them privacy, to ease Allison in slowly. And god, she was grateful for that. Allison sat down, unzipping her insulated lunch box, while Lydia was already a quarter of the way through her salad.

“So!” the redhead chirped in between bites. “Tell me _everything._ ”

Allison hesitated as she unpacked her food, baby carrots hovering over the table for a moment before she put them down. 

“Everything as in… _everything_? That seems like it’ll take a while,” she joked nervously, her cheeks dimpling.

“No, everything about you,” Lydia clarified, her tone coy and teasing. “Where in San Francisco you lived, what your old school was like, which boutique your mom shops for…”

“You’ve probably never heard of it,” the brunette said quickly, trying to will the heat away from her face. It really wouldn’t do to blush right now, and Lydia seemed to pick up on that.

“Try me.” Lydia’s attention was like a laser, brown eyes hardly blinking, a small smile on her face. Allison swallowed and glanced at her lunch, popping the top on her diet cola to delay a little longer. 

“Um…”

“Your mom isn’t a shopper for a boutique,” Lydia finally said, and it wasn’t a question. Allison felt like a stone had just dropped into her stomach, heavy and impossible to breathe around. Lydia had seen right through her in less than three hours. The rest of the school was sure to follow shortly behind.

“Look, I…”

“No, it’s okay,” Lydia interrupted again, before sipping her own diet soda. “No explanations needed. Everybody has the lies they tell in high school. Yours is harmless. Although I really do want to know where you got the jacket.”

Allison stared at the redhead in uncomprehending disbelief. A reprieve. The death of her social aspirations wasn’t actually looming before her after all. It took her a brief moment before she was able to answer. “My Aunt Kate picked it out for me, at Urban Outfitters.”

“Well, your Aunt Kate has impeccable taste.” Lydia smugly took another bite of her salad, appraising Allison again. “So, I figure your parents are either doing something illegal, or they’re actually in sales, but they’re selling something you don’t want the rest of the school to know about. Am I close?”

“Holy cow, are you a psychic or something?” The words burst out of Allison with another nervous laugh, and Lydia rolled her eyes impatiently.

“I’m _not_ psychic,” she said, the tone of amusement clear. “I’m simply very good at reading people. One doesn’t climb the ladder by being oblivious, you know?”

“And is that what you’re doing? Climbing the ladder?” Allison asked. Maybe she’d been the one to misread the situation. Lydia wasn’t a shallow socialite, she was...something else. Something Allison was just starting to put a shape to. Lydia smirked again.

“There’s more to life than this,” was the answer from the redhead, as she waved a fork of kale around at the school in general. “If that means making sure I’m perceived a certain way, adopting certain… _attitudes_ , then fine. I am not going to live my life in Beacon Hills. You’ve lived in San Francisco, and I’m willing to guess other big cities, too. Which _means_ you’ve got some insight. Which means I’d like to pick your brain.”

“Oh.” Allison felt a little crestfallen after all. Lydia was simply using her, like a lot of people had tried to use her over the years. At least this time it wasn’t for weapons. She’d take that as a win, frankly.

“So, in exchange, I’ll help you navigate high school, and not be the new girl all by yourself. Okay?” As if she was dropping a present in Allison’s lap, like she should be grateful. For one brief moment, Allison wanted to stand up, grab her baby carrots, and storm off. She wasn’t some charity case, incapable of making friends on her own, like Lydia seemed to be implying. All that showed on her face was a single second of bubbling anger - before it was gone. Lydia might have good intentions, but her approach was awful. Then again, it would be nice to at least have somebody to talk to, sit with at lunch. If this was them using each other, then that was what it’d be.

It was only high school, after all.

“All right,” Allison finally agreed, her tone sunny and cheerful. “Sounds like a deal to me!”

“Excellent!” Lydia smirked at her in return. “So. Tell me _everything._ ”

“About San Francisco?” Even with the promises that Lydia was on her side, Allison was still once-bitten, forever shy.

“About San Francisco. And any other big cities you can think of.”

Lydia’s attention was so genuine and sincere, Allison gave in. So she started talking, first about the cities they’d lived in, and then very briefly outlined what her parents did, after all. Who her family was, what their business consisted of, why they moved from city to city constantly. Lydia’s expression went from sly to genuinely surprised, and she blinked a couple of times.

“Well hell,” she interrupted, looking a little ill. “No wonder you say your mom’s a clothing shopper. I think I would to.”

It was the first truly human and honest thing Lydia had said all day, and Allison warmed even more to her, forgetting her momentary resentment. “Yeah. I just want to be normal, you know? I wanna go to prom, and I wanna have a boyfriend, and I wanna get my own car. Is that silly?”

She couldn’t help it. In spite of her reluctance to trust Lydia fully, the wistful loneliness she always felt won through. And Lydia surprised her by laying a hand on hers, and giving it a squeeze.

“Not at all.”

Relief flooded through Allison, and she was weak enough to let it show on her face, which Lydia smiled softly at. It felt like the start of a real friendship.

“...You just want to borrow this jacket.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Both girls dissolved into shrill giggles, bending over their picnic bench and muffling it into their hands. That was when Jackson sat down next to Lydia with a smooth thump, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her neck. Lydia squealed with delight, while Allison tamped down on her own giggles.

“What are you two laughing about?” the boy asked, smirking at Lydia knowingly.

“Girl stuff,” Lydia answered, sitting up straight and tossing her red curls over her shoulder, away from Jackson’s wandering lips. Allison did feel a little third-wheelish, but smiled at Jackson in return. He looked her up and down for a moment, and Allison wanted to crawl under the table. There was something about Jackson that set her teeth on edge, and she wasn’t exactly sure what it was. Lydia was one thing. Jackson seemed to be another entirely. But keeping up the friendship meant he was part of the deal, so she ignored her instincts and kept up a pleasant look.

“So, how you liking Beacon Hills so far, Allison?” Jackson’s attention didn’t leave Allison, even though he had his arms wrapped around Lydia’s middle. 

“It’s nice,” Allison said, finally unwrapping her turkey sandwich. (Which Lydia gave a haughty look to, but Allison ignored that.) “It’s quiet. After the city, this almost feels like a vacation. Like I’m out camping or something.”

Lydia scoffed at that, before rolling her head back into Jackson’s shoulder, his cue to nibble at her jawline. But only for a moment, because after two little kisses, he was right back to Allison again. And that was Lydia’s cue to start pouting, like a cat who wanted more petting from their favorite person. Allison tried not to snicker at the analogy in her own head.

“Do you like sports?”

It seemed like such a non-sequitur that Allison blinked, totally unsure how to answer that. Fortunately, Lydia came to her rescue.

“Oh, god, Jackson. Really? Ignore him, we’re just starting the lacrosse season and he’s obsessed.”

“I have to be obsessed, I’m the team captain.”

“Allison’s coming to the games, don’t worry.”

Allison glanced between the two of them as they bickered, not sure if this was a fight, a make-out session, or what. Although when Lydia said that last, she was very confused, not remembering signing up for this.

“Uh, what?”

“Coming to the games,” Jackson supplied. “You. Every other Friday, starting in three weeks. The whole school shows up for them, it’s tradition. Anybody misses, we lose.”

That sounded like superstitious nonsense to Allison, but she nodded her agreement slowly. “Okay, sounds like fun.”

“And she’ll help me cheer you on,” Lydia agreed, rolling her shoulders into Jackson’s chest, snuggling in closer as he tightened his arms around her. Allison paused again, mouth hanging slightly open. These two were like a freight train, rolling over anything in their path. Allison felt like she had no choice but to hop aboard, or get run over.

“Like joining the cheerleading squad? I don’t do that.” She had to stand up for herself, or she’d end up in a tiny skirt waving pom-poms. There were lines that would never be crossed. Becoming a cheerleader was one of them. Way, way, way out of her comfort zone, thank you. But Lydia had the answer yet again.

“We don’t have a cheerleading squad. The school cut the funding three years ago. So, I go to the games with a choice selection of hand-made signs, to give Jackson encouragement.”

Allison’s relief was tempered by Jackson’s sour face; he apparently didn’t appreciate the hand-made signs as much as Lydia thought. Allison had to resist the urge to snicker again.

“You can help me hold them up!” Lydia said pertly, as if it was a foregone conclusion that of _course_ Allison would give Jackson support. Oh, god, she was an athletic supporter. She had to take a quick sip of her soda to cover the internal laughter at that thought.

“Of course,” Allison agreed, going along with it. “You said we won the last three championships?”

“And Jackson was the first freshman named captain in the school’s history,” Lydia bragged. Now most teenage boys would look appropriately embarrassed by that. Or smugly egotistical. But Jackson just looked annoyed, as if being named captain wasn’t enough for him. And again, Allison had to wonder what the hell it was about this boy that made her skin crawl. Just as the thought was about to materialize, though, another boy sat down next to her, distracting her from it. She glanced at the new boy, and then did a double-take, eyes popping wide. He was beautiful. Like, manna from heaven blessed by the gods above _perfect_ , and Allison was taken aback. He was tanned, smooth-skinned, very well muscled, hawkish features, black-brown eyes and hair, perfectly white teeth. Stunning. Allison’s heart skipped in her chest as she stared at him.

“Because Jackson’s a really good player, and deserved it,” the new boy said, before turning fully to Allison. “Hi, I’m Danny.” He offered his hand to Allison to shake, and it was warm and soft and masculine.

“...Allison,” she managed in return, wondering why her mouth suddenly felt so dry.

“Uh oh,” gasped Lydia playfully, seeing the stunned look on Allison’s face. “Danny’s hooked another one!”

“Huh?” Allison glanced up again, her cheeks going bright pink. Oops, that was completely and totally obvious, wasn’t it? She might as well have lit up a sign above her head. She turned a chagrined look on Danny, who just looked slightly embarrassed, as if he knew that his beauty was too good for this world, and rubbed at the back of his head with one hand.

“Sorry about Lydia and Jackson, they think it’s hilarious that half the school has a crush on me.”

“That’s because it is hilarious,” Jackson returned, that self-satisfied smirk back on his face. “Don’t bother, Alli, Danny doesn’t bat for your team.”

Allison couldn’t even come up with a response for that, other than open-mouthed staring. There was so much going on here that she didn’t know where to start. Other than indignant outrage that Jackson had just outed Danny, perhaps against his wishes. She almost spoke up to defend the guy, but he was already rolling his eyes and snorting in annoyance.

“Dude, seriously? Why am I your best friend again?” Danny threw a wadded-up napkin at Jackson, who easily ducked it. So there was no anger there, just the sort of gentle ribbing that happens between two guy friends. Allison relaxed a little bit, mentally rearranging her perception of Danny. And Jackson.

“Because you love my Porsche.”

“Jackson drives a Porsche,” Lydia supplied to Allison, amused by the back and forth between the boys. It was like being in a wind tunnel, buffeted by the unstoppable forces of Jackson and Lydia’s personalities. Allison turned to Danny, trying to make sense of it all. 

“It’s okay, Allison,” Danny said kindly, bumping her shoulder with his. “You get used to it after a while. He’s only a jerk when he wants to show off.”

“I hope so,” she said in return, both eyebrows arching up. “I don’t know if can cope if he always acts like an asshole.”

There was a long moment where both Jackson and Lydia stared at her in silence, as if they were stunned that anybody would talk back to him like that. Even Danny went a little still, giving her the side eye. Allison lifted her chin and stared Lydia down in return, silently reminding her of her promise. There came a point where Allison would take zero shit, and she’d reached that point.

Jackson was the one to break first, bursting out laughing, throwing his head back and letting it all go. He actually looked human for once, instead of an ice sculpture, and Allison smirked. Lydia’s eyes were wide, but then she was shaking her head and giggling too.

“I like her, she’s got balls,” Jackson said after a moment, still chuckling to himself. “You did good, Lydia.”

“Oh, thanks,” was Allison’s sarcastic comeback to that. Lydia just shrugged helplessly, giggling and nodding her approval at Allison. That was when the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

“We’ll see you at practice after school?” Danny said as they started packing up their leftover trash.

“I’ll be there,” Allison agreed, tossing her empty soda can at the trash, fifteen feet away. It was a perfect shot, falling right in with no rebound or ticking the sides. Lydia and Danny seemed oblivious to that, but Jackson suddenly shot her a sharp look, eyes going cold again. The laughter was gone, and there was something dangerous in him in that moment. Allison felt like a rabbit in the path of a predator, small and trembling and stupid, right up until Lydia wrapped her arms around Jackson’s waist. The spell was broken, and Jackson shifted yet again, that easy and arrogant smile back on his lips, bouncing away back to class with the prettiest girl in school on his arm.

Allison bit her lower lip, and gathered up the rest of her things alone, thoughtfully making her way back into the school.

***

Stiles hated that lacrosse practice started in January. Sure, Beacon Hills was in California, but it seemed to be in the ass end of California. The miserably cold ass end. The palm trees ringing the school always started to get a little wilted and sickly around January and February. Chalk that up to poor city planning and an overeager landscaper.

He could feel his fingers going a little numb as he tied on the rest of his gear, out on the bleachers. His breath fogged between clenched teeth, as he yanked on his unwieldy and bulky gloves. Ugh. Why the hell was lacrosse a winter sport? Basketball, now that was a good winter sport, since it was primarily played _indoors._ God, why had he let Scott talk him into this? All he ever ended up doing was sitting on the bench as he shivered under three layers of protective padding. 

Scott, meanwhile, was all crooked-jaw determination, his face hardening like a slightly stale cupcake left out in the open air. It was adorable, for all that it was highly unlikely to get Scott first line. Scott was struggling with the laces on his cleats, yanking them tighter and tighter, until Stiles was worried that Scott would give himself gangrene.

“The problem isn’t the shoes, Scottie.”

“Shut up, Stiles.”

“But if you play, who’m I gonna talk to?” Stiles teased, changing tactics with a broad smirk. “You really gonna do that to your best friend?”

“I can’t sit out again! My whole life is sitting on the sidelines!”

Stiles sighed, bowing once again to Scott’s bone-deep sincerity. It was hard, being the best friend of a literal cocker spaniel. The boy was one collar and one milkbone away from man’s best friend. And yet, Stiles was one hundred percent here for Scott. Up to and including joining the goddamn lacrosse team, which should have been a subclause of the Geneva Convention.

Stiles was about to answer when he saw Lydia and Allison picking their way up into the higher seats of the bleachers. His logical mind knew that they were there for Jackson, but his monkey emotions were convinced they were there for Stiles. Lydia looked perfect, bundled up in a perfect burgundy, her peacoat flapping slightly along her thighs. Feminine. Beautiful. Her strawberry blonde tresses curled perfectly below her crocheted cap. She made everybody around her look like they were second best, and Stiles stared helplessly. He could smell her shampoo from where he sat, apples and freesia wafting on the breeze. Shit. He wanted to just vault up the steps of the bleachers and…

“This season I make first line.”

He was distracted, once again, by Scott’s totally irrational objectives, blinking as his friend started onto the field. Stiles was about to call him out, but then he saw that Scott was glancing up and to his left...oh. He was staring at Allison, perched next to Lydia. Of course.

They were doomed, frankly. Two boys, head over heels in love with two unobtainable girls. High school was going to condemn them to the lowest pits of unmitigated, unrequited, inevitable hell. Except for the fact that Allison seemed to have eyes for Scott, watching him without pause.

Stiles wasn’t jealous. He wasn’t. Nope. Not at all.

“McCall!”

“Yeah?”

Coach Finstock got right up in Scott’s face, right in front of Stiles, right in front of the rest of the team, including Jackson and Danny and Isaac and all of them. Stiles hung back, because that was bro code. Right up until Scott was humiliated and/or hurt? Stiles held off.

“You’re in goal!” Coach proclaimed, like a herald from Olympus. Stiles was a good enough friend to pretend he didn’t see Scott flinch as he caught the equipment. Stiles fell in with the rest of the team, trying to keep breathing through his mouth to avoid the overpowering odor of jockstraps and unwashed jerseys. God, what the hell was happening to him? Why was he smelling the lacking laundry skills of his fellow high schoolers?

“I-I’ve never played,” Scott protested, blinking owlishly at Coach.

“I know,” Coach returned placidly, smiling like he knew the secrets of the universe. “Scoring some shots will give the boys some confidence! First day back thing!” Coach slapped Scott on the shoulder soundly, his grin going even more unhinged than usual. “Get ‘em energized. Fire it up!”

“What about me?” Scott asked innocently, his face the usual puppish grimace. Stiles flinched again, gritting his teeth and shaking his head. That was going to get Scott killed, one of these days.

“Try not to take any in the face?” Coach suggested glibly, turning away and letting Scott take the targeted spot in the goal. Danny made a distressed noise; Danny Mahealani was the usual team goal, and hated seeing anybody else take the place without practice. Or talent. Or knowledge of how goal was played. Stiles couldn’t feel much sympathy for Danny, to be quite honest. Danny was Jackson’s best friend, after all, and Jackson was the enemy. Had been since second grade. That was something much more important to focus on, instead of the fact that he could clearly hear Scott and Coach conversing from halfway across the field. Or how Lydia and Allison were leaning into each other and giggling. Ugh. Distractions. So many fucking distractions, why were his meds not working?!

“Let’s go, c’mon!” Coach shouted to the team, as they all lined up for practice. Even Greenberg fell in, which was a surprise. Scott took his place in the goal, as Stiles stepped into line behind Tally and Lahey. But then, he had to pretend he heard nothing, nothing at all. Not Scott’s rabbiting heartbeat. Not the other team members muttering. Not…

“Who is that?” Allison asked Lydia, snatching Stiles’ scattered focus out of thin air. He swiveled his head toward her, seeing that she was staring at Scott, her eyebrows furrowed, her full lips pouting. And then, of course, Lydia had to answer.

“Him? I’m not sure who he is.”

That just made Stiles see red, to be honest. Okay, he and Scott were less than single-celled amoebas in the grand scheme of high school. But he and Scott had been in school with Lydia and Jackson since the _second fucking grade_ , and she didn’t even know Scott’s name. Not cool. Not. Cool. He loved Lydia, of course, but sometimes he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her into submission.

Scott was totally oblivious, of course, squaring his shoulders against the onslaught of his team, gripping his stick carefully and conscientiously. Even without any talent, Scott was determined to _try._ A massive downfall, in Stiles’ opinion.

“Why?” Lydia asked Allison, glancing at her with raised eyebrows, that Stiles was deliberately not noticing.

“He’s in my English class,” Allison answered with a shrug. Like it didn’t matter. Like Scott didn’t matter.

Stiles was furious all over again, and decided to tell Scott to avoid the brunette bitch he loaned a pen to. Scott deserved better than a two-faced ho who wouldn’t acknowledge...like Lydia hadn’t...shit. Shit.

The whistle that Coach blew made Stiles’ head ring, and he flinched back again, clapping two gloved hands to his ears. That did nothing, honestly, the shrill sound piercing right through layers of leather and cotton batting. Of course, the others on the team ignored him; Stiles was long a subject of scorn among the team. The klutz. The spazz. The idiot who had no coordination. So when he cleared his head, he was unsurprised to hear Jackson talking. Talking without consideration of who was around him.

“I’m gonna get him in the nuts,” Jackson said, a cruel smirk on his face. He was rocking the ball back and forth in the cradle of his stick, eyes locked on the distant figure of Scott in the goal. Stiles started forward.

“Dude,” Danny said. “That’s not cool.”

“Not my fault if he’s not wearing a strap,” Jackson countered. That was enough for Stiles, who darted out from behind the line, his own stick in hand. That was when everything slowed to a crawl. Life was suddenly in slow motion, as far as Stiles was concerned. He could sense Jackson stepping forward, sure. He could hear the subtle shift of his jersey at his elbows and armpits. He could hear the silken swoosh of the ball leaving the cradle of Jackson’ stick.

And then it was done, and Stiles was skidding to a stop in front of the goal, his own stick held at waist height, just in front of Scott’s groin. And the net was cradling the white lacrosse ball, inches from an injury. Scott barely had time to blink, before staring at Stiles. And the hard rubber ball inches from his groin.

“Dude…”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“STILINSKI!!” Coach was darting forward from the sidelines, blowing his whistle and waving his arms like a goddamn semaphore. “What the hell was that?!”

“...A perfect save?”

Stiles couldn’t help it, his natural defense of sarcasm popped up, even as he grinned innocently at his coach. Scott’s snorting giggle behind him only made him feel better about it all. The rest of the team, though, was staring at him like he’d just suddenly changed into Superman in front of their very eyes. Except Superman had respect. Stiles was sorely lacking it.

“I can see that!” Coach snapped, frowning like he just heard his mother had died. “So you’re showing off, huh? Okay. Fine! Show the hell off in the goal! McCall! You’re benched. Stilinski! Get your ass in front of the net!”

The shrill of the whistle made Stiled flinch again, which was enough to let Radavich lob a ball right at his helmet. Stiles hit the deck as Scott retreated, much to the amusement of the rest of the team. And to the amusement of Allison and Lydia.

“...Fuck this,” Stiles muttered to himself, hauling himself to his feet, and getting the goalie stick up into position.

And from there...god. It was so easy. It was like the other members of his team were lobbing him balls in slow motion. He could spot every one, almost before they left the nets of his teammates. There was even a soundtrack playing in his head, as the giant grin burst against his cheeks, blocking every single lobbed ball that came his way. He didn’t even have to try, it felt like. It was _easy._ So easy, his body twisting into contortions he was never capable of before last night, his breath coming easy, his brain going still.

Yeah. He had this.

“He seems like he’s pretty good.”

Allison and Lydia were sitting up, taking notice. That was hard to block out, to be honest, but Stiles managed, still smirking like the devil himself.

“Yeah. He’s very good.”

And the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day. Lydia. Lydia thought he was - and he quotes - _“VERY GOOD.”_ Nothing could top today. Nothing. Even Scott looked happy for him, bouncing up and down on the bench, clapping his gloved hands at every save.

Right up until Jackson took his spot at the front of the line again.

“Oh, god,” Stiles groaned, gritting his teeth and planting his feet. If Jackson wanted to nail Scott in the nads, there was one hell of a retribution coming now. Stiles made eye contact across the field, locking with the cold blue of Whittemore’s eyes. That boy needed a therapist, he really did. A therapist and maybe somebody to lock up the rage monster inside him. The Hulk had _nothing_ on Jackson Whittemore. The Hulk was actually better in touch with his emotions, to be totally honest. Jackson was so emotionally constipated, it made self-help authors turn in their word processors. Therapists gave up and retreated to Utah. Jackson could send any professional running for any number of painted, Zen-inducing hills. Stiles was certain that Jackson was created by some angsty author somewhere, who needed a stereotypical jock to satifsy some quota somewhere. Life was just that cruel.

Stiles felt himself zooming in on Jackson, to the point where he could count the freckles against Jackson’s nose. That shouldn’t be possible, and yet, wow, Jackson had some seriously attractive freckles… _focus._

It wasn’t enough to lob a ball at him, no. Jackson had to take a fucking running start. Stiles could hear Lydia and Allison and Scott take a collective breath from the bleachers, which, again, impossible. But that was secondary to the predator heading right for his face. Some instinct, something flared up inside Stiles, something indefinable. Something _bestial._ Something that made his eyes flare golden, even in the bright sunlight of the afternoon practice. Fortunately for him, his eyes were partially hidden behind his mask, and nobody noticed. 

Nobody but a dark figure, lurking behind the bleachers, a dark figure that even Stiles didn’t notice.

And then Jackson was lobbing the ball right at his head.

And then Stiles was catching it with ease.

Everybody went wild. Scott. Lydia and Allison. Coach. The rest of the team. Nobody had ever been known to block Jackson’s fastball, and Stiles had just done it with ease. He stared at the ball in the white net of his stick, and then _grinned._ Grinned like he’d just won the lottery, and to everybody else, he had. Even Lydia was whooping with glee, much to Jackson’s annoyance. His heart leapt in his throat, and his stomach fluttered and dropped. For once, for fucking _once_ , Stiles Stilinski was the hero of the team. Bizarro world, here we come.

And boy, was he gratified to see Lydia glance at Jackson, with a pert nod and a raise of her eyebrows.

Stiles Stilinski was suddenly the hero of the hour...and Lydia Martin suddenly seemed all too willing to throw off her boyfriend.

… _Good._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So once upon a time, there was a woman who was 100% turned off by the canon she once loved, and thus stopped writing her fic in that fandom. 
> 
> Then, she got a bunch of kudos and comments, and blushed, and stammered, and grinned to herself. And decided to start writing in the fandom again, because of all of the above.
> 
> So basically, I stopped watching Teen Wolf after season 4, because I thought it was so so so terrible. I saw enough of 5A to know I was FURIOUS with canon. And as a result won't be writing anything set in that portion of the story. I actually left the fandom for a bit. But then I started thinking....hell. I might as well go back to the start, back to the stuff I loved, and continue this fic. So...here it is. 
> 
> I hope to continue this within the next month or two. And thank you to everybody who encouraged me to keep going. I truly appreciate it, it got me through some seriously dark times. <3


	4. Chapter 4

The soil was gritty, uncomfortable under his fingernails. With every movement, it just drove the particles deeper into the nail bed, made his cuticles bleed. It wasn’t as much pain as he deserved, but it was a good start. His hands were digging into the soft, welcoming earth. He was doing it without the benefit of a shovel, or his claws. This was his penance, or at least one tiny fraction of a percentage of his penance.

No, the dirt was only a mild inconvenience. What really hurt was the aconite. The rope was embedded with the stuff, every fiber impregnated with it. And it burned. God, did it burn, raising nasty blisters along his palms with every little pull and twitch. The first round was done, moving into the second loop. Then the third, each circle growing wider and wider, never ending. Pull, twist, pat the soil down, repeat. Spin and circle, spiral out. The outward spiral was one symbol meaning, the inward another. Five passes. Six.

And then he slammed his palm down, hard, above the last inch of the rope, burying it completely, feeling the spell settle into his bones, into the ground. The last sprig of aconite left above ground swayed slightly, in a breeze that didn’t exist. Or maybe it was just his trembling breath on the exhale, making the delicate purple blossoms shake. He scented the change in her body below, and he choked back a sob. He could feel the grief threatening to overwhelm him again, could feel his control slipping as his fangs began to descend.

No.

He ground his teeth together, the muscles along his jawline jumping and twitching. The anger flooded him, making his heart pound a little faster, making the spell that much more potent. He hadn’t learned much magic, but this spell...this one was practically branded onto his brain. The first time he’d seen it done happened just a few miles away, to his left.

He deliberately did not look left.

No, he looked up, allowing his anger to have free reign, as he stared at the blackened beams of his old house. The smell of rotten wood and charcoal was still strong, even six years later. Fortunately, time and nature and rain had washed away the stench of burned human flesh and burned werewolf fur.

Derek Hale stood up, brushing his hands free of the leftover soil, reopening the aconite blisters. Weeping pus, red and swollen, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his father’s leather jacket and started to walk away from Laura’s grave.

He’d felt her die, just like he’d felt the rest of his pack, his family die. But the big surprise was that the power hadn’t come to him, like it had gone to her. Which meant that she’d been killed by another werewolf, stealing the Hale’s power for good. 

“ _Trust me, Derek. I know what I’m doing._ ”

Her words haunted him as he made his way back through the woods, his feet chuffing almost silently through the winter-dead leaves below. The last two cognizant members of the Hale pack, and she’d split them up. Why? Why, Laura? Why would you come back to this literal slaughter house? The territory meant nothing. They had new territory in New York. Sure, it wasn’t their home, but it was safe. They had no home anymore…

Clearly. And yet she’d forgone the safety and come back to Beacon Hills, why, why, oh god why?

Anger. Remember the anger. Focus on the anger. It makes you human.

Derek knew that any volatile emotion was a bad anchor, to be honest. But it was better than grief. Anger was outward, propelled him into motion. Grief was inward, and dragged him to a stop. And now that he was officially without an Alpha, he had a very limited amount of time. Stopping now wasn’t an option. He had to either find the wolf that killed Laura, and kill him in return, take back the power...or slink back to New York with his tail between his legs, Omega. Might as well paint a target on his back, either way.

So if he was going to die, he might as well go out fighting for what remained of his family, his pack’s honor, his home.

Except now he had a problem. (As if burying half of his sister’s body under the spiral wasn’t a big enough problem.)

Because this newly-minted Alpha, whoever he was, had already bitten somebody. A teenager, by the smell of things. Derek wasn’t one hundred percent whom, he’d only gotten a distant whiff from his hidey hole here on the estate grounds. He’d smelled the blood, of course, walking by the clearing. (The clearing...big tree trunk. Derek wasn’t impressed.) Smelled the chemotrails of the fight, the scent of fear on the oak branch the boy had used as a club. (Kid got lucky there, this particular species of oak was like a kick to the teeth, when handled with intent. Only thing worse was mountain ash.) He’d traced the lingering scent of blood to the exit of the preserve...and then it was gone. Ambulance? Made sense, if the kid was bitten and bleeding. Derek just had to hope that whoever stitched the kid up didn’t recognize the pattern of the bite.

Deaton could...no. Deaton wasn’t to be trusted. Not anymore. 

The Wolf Moon was Friday night. That meant he had four days to track the kid down, isolate him, and hope to god the bite took. Or...maybe not. That would solve the problem very easily, to be honest. Rejection, and a swift death. Maybe it would happen to this teenager, too…

Another reason to be angry. _Her_ face floated across his mind’s eye, the last moments of her agony forever burned behind his retinas. He closed his eyes, and let out a slow breath.

Laura’s Camaro was parked just at the bottom of the hill, right where she’d left it, to investigate this ‘nibble’ she’d felt in their territory, from across the country. The keys were tucked thoughtfully above the sun visor, and dropped into his waiting hand, nails still black and grimy with the dirt of Laura’s grave. Twenty-two years old, and ready to destroy himself, a lost cause long worth abandoning. He turned the keys in the ignition, and gunned the engine impatiently. It roared for him, all eight cylinders straining and firing, lighting up the dead woods with their noise and fury. 

He had to get to the high school before the last bell. He had a newly-bitten Beta to control. Although, god, it was so damn tempting to just let the boy run wild, and bring some retribution to this hell hole of a town. But that kid didn’t deserve a wolfsbane bullet in his head. Whoever he was.

Derek put the Camaro into drive, and peeled out, scattering leaves and debris from under the tires. He had no choice but to leave Laura, and the burnt out husk of his home, behind him for now. 

Being back in Beacon Hills after six years was impossible. Odd. Horrifying. Old, scabbed-over memories led him off the Hale property, onto the county road behind the preserve. He could see every landmark between here and the school in his mind, and he ticked off each one as he passed. Sure, the trees were a little taller, the big boulders greener with moss and lichen. The old Shell station had a new digital sign instead of the plastic placards. The strip mall had more black windows than not, another sign of the town’s declining fortunes.

And the school…

God. It was exactly the same. A cold chill swept over Derek as he parked the Camaro up the block, swung the door shut behind him with a hollow thump.

_”Laura! Laura, what’s happening, why...why can’t I…?”_

_“I don’t know, Derek. I don’t...I can’t either. It’s something bad. We have to go.”_

He could hear his sister’s panic, across the empty echoes of six years, across the scorch of flames and the acrid choking smoke. He stared at the sign in front of the school, where he’d run to her, where she’d grabbed his shoulders and shook him into something resembling submission. No wonder she became the Alpha, when mom died. No wonder.

Shaking his head, he blinked away his ghosts and circled back around to the lacrosse field, being very careful to keep out of sight. Some of his former teachers still worked here, and he didn’t need to bump into any of them. Not now. Not when Laura was still warm in her grave. Uncomfortable questions would be asked, questions he couldn’t - didn’t want to - answer.

The last bell sounded just as Derek found himself a likely hiding spot near the field. If it was indeed a boy that had been bitten, then odds were he’d be here, at the practice. Huh. For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel that gut-churning resentment that had plagued his high school life. How could he resent a bunch of teenage jocks when his entire family was dead?

Perspective. Hell of a thing in a self-destructive werewolf with no pack.

Long practice made tuning out the chatter and chuff of the school easy. He didn’t pick up individual scents anymore unless he focused, same with heartbeats and loud bells and whistles. He was totally calm and unruffled as half the school made its way onto the field for the practice, including the ones just along for moral support. The bleachers were half-filled with kids, bundled up in warm coats and scarves and gloves, an industrious few even cracking open textbooks. So it was the same now as then; the sports practices were the social event of the day. In this small town, no wonder. It was either this, or loitering at the half-closed mall. That cold chill from earlier passed over him again, warmed slightly by bittersweet nostalgia.

Only now it was time to concentrate.

He closed his eyes, let his senses roam free. Listened, smelled for anything different. There. Somewhere in the knot of boys lined up to take shots at the floppy-looking kid in goal. Derek’s eyes raked over all of them. A new Alpha would pick somebody strong. Tall and muscular and swift. Somebody with already honed reflexes; Derek had to admit that the Alpha chose well by picking a jock. He automatically dismissed six of the boys on the field; too skinny, too weak. No, the wolf had to be either that Jackson kid or his friend Danny, the scent was strongest around them both.

“I’m gonna hit him in the nuts.”

The words from Jackson made Derek’s eyebrows raise, and his mouth turn down further. Well, another thing hadn’t changed. Same casual cruelty from teenage boys, no surprise. Derek found himself hoping that Jackson wasn’t the wolf after all; he didn’t want that shit in his pack.

The scent shifted, and Derek looked up sharply. One of the skinny misfits he’d dismissed in his own head was suddenly running, running just imperceptibly faster than a normal human should be able to, his feet flying over the turf, toothpick legs pumping.

Oh, crap.

Derek saw the whole thing, the impossible catch, and the subsequent display, and it set his teeth on edge. The boy was using his power to show off at lacrosse, which just made Derek furious. The gift, the responsibility, the heritage of his family, and this… _Stilinski_ was using it to make cow eyes at a girl on the bleachers. It was just made worse when he spotted the tell-tale glint of golden yellow eyes flashing out of Stilinski’s mask.

The Alpha, whoever it was, had picked a skinny social outcast with the bodily grace and prowess of a newborn deer.

He was definitely going to kill the Alpha now.

He hung out just enough to hear Stilinski bragging with his friend, the floppy-haired boy whose testicles had been targeted. Heard them talking about heading back to the preserve, to try to find Stilinski’s flashlight, and the other boy’s - Scott, his name was apparently Scott - asthma inhaler.

Derek wasted no time retracing his steps and getting back to the Camaro. He had to find those items first, so he could confront these two teenage menaces to secrecy. And figure out a way to get Stilinski alone. As he closed himself back in the car, another long-forgotten memory surfaced; a man with a careworn face and a sheriff’s badge, pulling a blanket around Derek’s shoulders after the fire. The name on his uniform? 

Stilinski.

Oh, crap.

***

Stiles deliberately shuffled his feet as he leaped across the stream, causing water to go flying in a very satisfying way. And he was laughing. Like, literally cackling like a damn hyena, his voice echoing through the sparse woods. 

“...And did you see the look on Jackson’s face?!” he asked, for the sixth or seventh time. “Holy crap, he looked like he’d just given birth to a porcupine, breech presentation. That was _awesome._ ”

Scott trailed behind much more sedately, watching Stiles with a very concerned expression. Sure, it had been awesome. Of course it had. But that little display was on the tail end of Stiles’ epic crash in chem. He went from zero to one hundred million without any sleep. Or food. Or additional meds. Scott knew when Stiles had too much Adderall, he would get shaking. And right now? Stiles’ hands were as steady as rocks, his eyes clear and exuberant. So this wasn’t an Adderall overdose. It was something else.

“I don’t know what it was,” Stiles continued, just about bursting with joy. “It was like I had all the time in the world to catch the ball.”

“Yeah?” Scott asked, gnawing on his lower lip.

“Yeah, like everything was in slow-mo.”

“Dude, you were in slow-mo during Chemistry, too,” Scott pointed out, arms windmilling as he made his way across a branching of the creek, leaping over a fallen log. “What’s going on with you, man?”

“...I don’t know,” Stiles finally admitted. For all that he would lie, and say he was fine, this day was turning out to be the weirdest day of his short life. If there was anybody he could come clean to, it was Scott McCall. “That’s not the only weird thing.”

“I knew it!” Scott barked, jogging a bit to grab the back of Stiles’ jacket, pulling his t-shirt collar tight. Stiles choked a bit, spun back around to face his best friend, only slightly red in the face. “What else is weird? Tell me!”

God, Scott was so sincere, it was nauseating sometimes. But he also _cared._ Stiles couldn’t keep up the lies, not even to himself anymore.

“I’m hearing things I shouldn’t be able to hear,” he confessed, scuffing a bit at the dead leaves under their feet. “Smell things…”

“Smell things?” Scott looked confused, his baseline state of being. “Like what?”

Stiles sniffed once, and wrinkled his nose. “Like the stale JuicyFruit in your pocket.”

Scott blinked, and reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out a battered, half-empty, bright yellow pack of gum. Gum that he’d honestly forgotten was in there, and had been sitting on all day. He held it out for just a moment, before tentatively offering a piece to Stiles. Stiles snorted and started walking again, rolling his eyes. Scott hustled to catch up, tucking the gum thoughtlessly away.

“This all started with the bite!” Scott insisted, running up after Stiles again. They were getting closer to the spot where they’d run into Sheriff Stilinski, and Stiles was kicking the leaves with his sneakers, trying to unearth their lost items. “What if it’s, like, an infection? Like your body’s flooding with adrenaline before you go into shock or something?”

“Shock’s immediate,” Stiles countered, eyes on the ground. “Already thought of that. It’s been almost twenty four hours, no way I’d go into shock now.”

“But Stiles…!”

“You know what? Maybe you’re right. I actually think I’ve heard of this,” Stiles finally said, standing up straight and snapping his fingers, like he’d just figured it out. Scott blinked, jaw dropping a little. “It’s a _specific_ kind of infection.”

“What? What’s it called?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I think it’s called _lycanthropy._ ”

That got another adorably confused expression out of Scott, because that sounded legit enough to be serious. Scott never was a student of the classics, after all. Hell, Scott was barely a student of the moderns. Hell, Scott was barely a student.

“What’s that? Is that bad?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s the worst.”

Scott’s expression fell, and Stiles could hear his friend’s heartbeat speed up. Holy crap, he really did have him going. Stiles almost felt bad. Almost.

“But only once a month.”

“Once a month?”

“Mmmhmm, on the night of the full moon.”

And then Stiles smirked, tilted his head back, and howled softly, like a wolf. Scott’s expression went from worried and horrified to fed up in a split second, his heart beat calming back down. Stiles burst out laughing, as Scott shoved hard at his shoulder.

“You asshole!” Scott went back to looking for his inhaler, as Stiles tried to catch his breath.

“Hey, you’re the one who said you heard a wolf howling last night!” Stiles insisted, jumping up and pouncing on Scott’s back. “Maybe I’m a werewolf!”

“There could be something seriously wrong with you!” Scott insisted, shoving Stiles off again and punching him lightly on the arm.

“But there is! I’m cursed, Scottie! Doomed to a life of dark servitude to the moon! Hide the maidens in the village, I’ll steal them away and ravage them. Before curfew, of course, my dad would kill me if I was out after eleven.”

“Shut up!”

“You should go to shop class, melt all the silver you can find. Friday’s a full moon, after all.”

“You’re a terrible friend and I hate you.” Scott was giving back as good as he got, although he had to get up awfully early to keep up with Stiles on a good day. And today? Today was a damn good day. Humiliating Jackson was now the highlight of his life. So he grabbed Scott’s hand and pressed it to his chest dramatically.

“Aww, Scottie, don’t be like that, give me a kiss and let’s make up…”

“One of these days, Gay Chicken is gonna backfire on you,” Scott insisted, yanking his hand free and hiking up a little hill. And then he gave a triumphant little squawk. “This is it! This is where we ran into your dad. I think. Help me look for my inhaler.”

Stiles cast around, frowning a little. This hill looked like any other little hill in the woods, but what the hell. So he and Scott crouched down in the underbrush, rooting through the leaves to try and find the thing.

“And my flashlight, don’t forget.” 

“My inhaler is like, eighty bucks!”

“So’s my flashlight!”

“Dude, no way…”

They were so busy bickering that they didn’t hear the man moving through the forest to meet them. (Then again, god, he moved so silently, Stiles knew he hadn’t heard a thing. Not a footstep, not a heartbeat. Nothing.) Stiles was the one to glance up, and jerk into a standing position, whacking Scott on the shoulder to get his attention.

Both boys were on their feet a second later, facing down the incredibly dark, incredibly intimidating figure in black leather, standing not twenty feet away. Stiles heard Scott gulp, but other than that, they stood their ground. Great. Half a body goes missing in the forest, and here’s tall, dark and gruesome, lurking up behind them. Not suspicious at all, wow. And then...he started walking toward them.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked, frowning at Stiles in particular. “Huh? This is private property.”

“Uh, sorry man, we didn’t know,” Stiles answered for both of them. And that’s when he recognized Leather Jacket, and it was his turn to gulp a little.

“Yeah, we were just looking for something, but…” Scott tried to finish, and then flinched back when Leather Jacket turned the glare on him. “...Forget it.”

And then the inhaler was flying through the air, lobbed from the pocket of the strange man, right at Scott. Without thinking, Scott caught it, and stared at it like it was suddenly on fire, or something. Stiles was beyond gobsmacked, and about to ask if he’d found a flashlight too...when Leather Jacket turned and walked away without another word.

Stiles stared after him, open-mouthed, trying to figure out what the actual livid _hell_ was going on.

When the stranger was finally out of sight, Scott seemed to recover, tucking the inhaler away. “Okay, wow. Look, whatever dude, I gotta get to work.”

“Dude!” Stiles grabbed Scott by the sleeve of his hoodie, holding him in place a moment longer. “That was Derek Hale!” That earned him a blank stare, but what else was new? “You remember, right? He’s only, like, a few years older than us.”

“Remember what?”

“His family? They all burned to death in a fire like ten years ago.”

“...Oh man, that’s awful.” Scott’s expression softened again, he always was a soft touch for a sob story. And losing your entire family in a fire was definitely qualifying.

“He moved away right after. With his sister.” Stiles always did have the memory for random bits of trivia. He remembered his dad talking about it with one of his deputies, remembered hearing how sad it was that Laura and Derek Hale had to leave town.

“I wonder what he’s doing back?”

At that, Stiles just snorted, shaking his head in disbelief. Derek was clearly king of the creepers, and that little exchange didn’t impress him one bit.

“C’mon,” Stiles said quietly, giving up his flashlight for lost. “Let’s get out of here.”

***

It took Derek twenty minutes to stop shaking.

Not ten years ago. Just six. Felt like an eternity. Not all burned to death, a few died of smoke inhalation. Mostly the children. Their lungs were whole and unscorched, which meant they hadn’t been breathing when the flames swept over them. A few bodies hadn’t even been found; their official cause of death was ‘complete immolation.’ 

He knew. The kid had already figured it out, and was making fucking _jokes_ about it.

Derek held the flashlight tighter in both hands, twisting the heavy metal casing into scrap. It screeched and screamed as metal rubbed against metal, and his claws dug into the carbon steel. He wanted it to be that dumb kid’s neck. With his Captain America shirt and his stupid hoodie and his ridiculous buzz cut and his _father the goddamn sheriff of the county._

He flung the flashlight away, feeling a great deal of satisfaction as it broke a window, one of the last few unshattered panes in the ruin. This was through anger and out the other side. The Alpha had picked the one person in town it would be impossible to get rid of. If Stiles died, then the whole world would eventually know about what had happened here. Because Sheriff Stilinski wouldn’t rest until he found out who’d murdered his son. Or, if Stiles _did_ make it, did transition completely, then what? Because being a werewolf wasn’t exactly something you could hide from your nearest and dearest. Especially at the beginning. The sheriff would have to be brought into the know...and that would open up a can of worms that nobody would be ready to deal with.

This was a hell of a lot more complicated than he’d initially thought.

His plan to get Stiles alone was immediately discarded; he could tell that Floppy-Hair - Scott, right - wouldn’t just walk away. He was the kind of loyal idiot that would end up on a mortician’s slab, in this world. Loyal and caring and good. And naive as hell, clearly. Listening to Stiles wind him up was almost painful. So first he had to lure Scott away. 

And then he could talk with Stiles.

And he had until Friday night to do it.

***

If he was honest, it was starting to freak him out.

After dropping Scott off at work, Stiles drove himself home, mind whirling at a million miles a minute. His casual joking in the woods was now starting to make more and more sense. Nobody would ever accuse Stiles of having an under-active imagination. But then again, nobody would accuse Stiles of being the sort of flat-out, LARPing weirdo that couldn’t tell the difference between reality and fiction. (Okay, sure, he had his share of World Of Warcraft-related fanfiction on his computer, but that was _different._ ) 

The bite. The enhanced senses. The whole thing at lacrosse practice. It was all adding up, and he wasn’t much liking the sum.

It was a rare night that he didn’t turn on his scanner. It was a rare night that he didn’t do his homework. It was a very rare night that he didn’t even play Call of Duty or Dragon Age. No. No, tonight, he was digging. Digging hard, into the bowels of Google, for answers. Oh, sure, for every search he did, there was at least one link to a Werewolf: The Apocalypse forum. Or, worse, a Laurell K. Hamilton fan site. (And Jesus, he so did not need to know about the whole A/B/O Dynamic. Or knotting. Wow, could that actually even _fit?!_ )

Aside from the really kinky and weird stuff, the actual lore was fascinating. Men bitten by the wolf, howling at the moon, wolfsbane and moonstone, from Lon Chaney to Michael J. Fox. The movies had called forth the bestial man and, in doing so, killed him a thousand times over. The rare story that ended happily usually involved a cure of some sort. Not a single character in fiction had a happy ending with that particular curse. The Beast of Gévaudan jumped out at him at one point, and he frowned. 

Impossible.

And yet…

“Grrrr…!”

He tried growling, only to discover that he sounded like a pissed-off Pomeranian. And then he coughed, because that shit tickled his throat. He held his hands up in gnarled approximations of claws, his knuckles at awkward angles. 

“Claws,” he demanded, staring at his fingernails.

Nothing happened.

“Claws! C’mon!” he whined, flexing his fingers even harder. Nothing. Bupkis. Zilch. His fingernails remained dull and bitten-off, gnawed at in the impatience of ADHD. He turned and ran into the bathroom, baring his teeth in the mirror. With his thumbs, he pushed hard at his canines, pushed up until he had a headache.

Nope. Nothing.

“What the hell, Stilinski?” he muttered to himself, blushing slightly. All that stared back at him was a gawky white boy with too many moles and buzz cut. No fangs, no claws, no fur. Nothing.

This was what happened when he let himself get too involved with the shit that went on in his head. His head was a dangerous place, after all. It should be left alone to run as it pleased, and never, ever taken seriously.

He let out a slow breath, and shook his head, staring at himself in the mirror.

“Get a grip,” he said lowly, meeting his own eyes in the reflection. “You’re acting crazy.”

He finally left the bathroom, flopped down on his bed with a huff, shaking his head at the ceiling. There’s no such thing as werewolves. He was imagining it all, had to be the only rational explanation. He wasn’t a werewolf. He was just a teenage boy with a bear bite, lucky to be alive, and imagining all the craziness he was going through. A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, and rain started pattering against his window. Stiles turned his head just slightly, watched the raindrops trickle in random patterns down the glass. (Not random, but dictated by the angle of the drop and the microscopic irregularities in the glass. Every drop was destined to fall in just that way, every rivulet formed for a reason. Stiles found that comforting.)

Overactive imagination brought on by trauma.

Only rational explanation.

Of course, that was when his side started itching like hell. With a grunt of irritation, he started to pull off the bandages on his stomach, only to discover that the wound he’d had stitched up was _rejecting the stitches._

“Oh my god,” he groaned, disgusted by his own bodily reactions. He started scratching desperately at the sutures, blunt nails pulling and tugging at them ineffectively. But then, perfect little loops of blue-black thread started flaking out of his body like dead skin, and he retched at the visual. More desperate scratching, more heavy breathing, and soon, every single stitch was _out._

And he was left with a completely healed, completely unscarred abdomen.

...Only. Rational. Explanation...

***

Derek hunched his shoulders against the rain and watched as Scott McCall flipped the sign on the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic, declaring it closed. Alan Deaton had left thirty minutes ago, giving Scott the pleasure of cleaning up for the day. This was it. This was Derek’s chance to get Scott alone, and convince him to back off of Stiles for a week, so they could talk. Just talk. They’d figure it all out, somehow.  
But even as Derek was about to approach the front door of the clinic, an SUV that he knew far, far too well pulled into the driveway. Or rather, careened into the driveway, parking cattywompus across three spaces with a screech of brakes and tire rubber.

An Argent. Here. Now. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Derek shrank back into the shadows again, holding his breath. The aconite blisters on his palms had long since healed, but his hands itched anyway, itched to get vengeance on this scion of the Argent clan. If he wanted to strangle Stiles, he wanted to watch this Argent die under his claws, as his family had died in the flames.

No. No. Not now. That would start a war on a second front, a war he was one hundred percent guaranteed to lose. He had to get to Stilinski, kill the Alpha first. Getting into it with hunters right now would just wind up with him vivisected. If he was lucky. His self-destructive tendencies weren’t quite that loud. He watched as the girl hysterically leaped out of the car, leaving the door wide open and the keys still in the ignition.

She was having a panic attack. He could smell it on her a mile off, even as the rain soaked her. It honestly took him aback; an Argent girl of this age should have already had the full training, been in complete control of her emotions. They usually started with the girls at age seven. This sort of display was incomprehensible in a fully-trained hunter. And she wasn’t faking it, either, he’d learned all too well what faking it looked like, smelled like. He watched as she pounded frantically on the glass door with two flat palms, yelling for somebody, anybody to help her, help her please.

His senses went into overdrive, instantly searching for a threat. Anything that could make an Argent freak out like this had to be something _big._ A berserker? Maybe. How could one be here now, there wasn’t a mage around for...

Oh.

He smelled the blood of the dog in the back of the car, the low whimpering of the injured animal, the scent of its wet fur along the front bumper of the SUV. This Argent girl had hit the dog in the rain, and in a fit of hysterics, rushed it here to the closed animal clinic for help.

Huh.

It was almost unimportant when Scott answered the door of the clinic, and the girl breathlessly told him what had happened, tears tracking down her face along with the rain. The dog was freed from its leather-upholstered prison, only mildly snapping at the two teenagers. Derek didn’t even bother growling at it from the shadows; the animal was letting Scott touch it. His brain was whirring a mile a minute as Scott and the Argent girl - Allison, her name was Allison - got the dog inside to set its broken leg.

Allison Argent wasn’t a hunter.

Which made no goddamn sense at all. If she was a hunter, she wouldn’t have even gotten the dog off the road, she would have shot it cleanly at the scene of the accident and disposed of the carcass without even chipping a nail. That’s what hunters did. They compartmentalized, they were ruthless and efficient and they certainly didn’t save puppies and cry about it.

Chris and Victoria Argent hadn’t trained their only daughter to be a hunter.

It was like suddenly discovering that some basic rule of nature was totally upended, the sun rising in the west and gravity turning off. Impossible. And now he’d definitely lost his chance to talk to Scott, because Allison was decidedly taking up all of his attention. He had forty-eight hours to get to Stiles before something terrible happened, and his window of opportunity was getting narrower by the second. All because Allison Argent wasn’t a hunter. But her parents definitely were.

And so was her aunt.

His stomach roiled at the thought of her, and he retreated, leaving the two teens to dance around each other. 

Like he and Kate had once danced around each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catch me on Tumblr at [BitsyFic.](http://bitsyfic.tumblr.com)


	5. Chapter 5

The bathroom was thick with steam and condensation from the scalding shower, as Jackson reached forward and wiped the flat of his hand across the mirror. It revealed a diagonal wedge of his face, from his slick-wet hair to his jawline, slate gray eyes dimmed by the haze. Now that? That was the face of a winner.

He had it all. Or at least, he liked to think he had it all. Or at least, he liked _everybody else_ to think he had it all. His life was a series of carefully cultivated facades, gleaming and flawless. The nice thing about facades? They could even be put up in his own mind, and depending on the day of the week, he might even believe them.

He had it all. A stellar GPA, captain of the winning lacrosse team, loving (and above all wealthy) parents, and a car that most doctors couldn’t afford. His Porsche was just like him. Gleaming and flawless and powerful. He never had to be reminded to take care of his things; he was almost a fanatic about it. Spotless room, spotless car, spotless permanent record. Spotless.

He swiped over his chin with one hand, tilting his face this way and that in the mirror. He had to shave twice a day to maintain his skin, and his regimen was, again, flawless. He had no problems with using expensive products, because this didn’t just _happen_.

No. People like Jackson Whittemore didn’t just _happen._ Everything was meticulously planned, plotted, taken care of. He was more together at age sixteen than most college graduates. (Speaking of, his early acceptance to Yale Law was practically a given. The alumni association were enjoying their new computers.) Because that’s what it was all about. The control. Being able to look the world in the eye and know that you’ve got it all.

He looked himself in the eye.

That was the problem with facades. One little nudge in just the wrong direction, and they’d crumble. He watched his own jaw clench in the mirror, like an out of body experience, watched the self-loathing creep up and eat away at the shining, spotless shell. Like acid, like mold, slowly smoldering under the surface.

And tonight, he had a new figure to blame.

_Stilinski._

That loud-mouth little shit. Showing him up like that on the field. What the actual livid hell?

Jackson carefully put his razor back down, rinsing it and cradling it as directed so the blades wouldn’t go dull. He carefully splashed his face with his aftershave, wiped his face with the rough hot towel. Carefully smoothed his moisturizer on, trimmed his nails, plucked a few stray hairs here and there. (Danny liked to tease him about his manscaping. Danny was worse than he was and had no room to talk.) Washed his hands. And then again, and then slathered them with anti-bacterial lotion.

By the time he was done with his routine, the rage had subsided again, and the facade was shaking on crumbling foundations, but it still stood. He was still captain of the team. Stilinski was just showing off, and tomorrow he’d go back to his rightful place, with his skinny little ass warming the bench. Back to the bottom of the roster. And Jackson would still be at the top. Because if he wasn’t at the top, he was nowhere. There was no such thing as second place. There’s first place, and there’s nothing. And Jackson Whittemore refused to be nothing.

He crossed back to his room, towel slung low on his narrow hips, and couldn’t resist a small flex in the full length mirror on his closet door. Stilinski sure as hell didn’t have this, a body honed to perfection. Today had just been a fluke, that pathetic little nerd probably couldn’t even press twenty pounds. He probably wouldn’t touch a bare boob until he was in his thirties. There were certain conclusions to be drawn from ‘survival of the fittest,’ and Jackson had learned them before he learned algebra. If one was fit, another was weak. If one was weak, one would not survive. Ergo, survival meant that compassion for the weak was weakness itself.

That’s logic.

That’s why he liked Lydia. She got it. Hell, she had the game down to a science, precisely calculated like one of her quadratic equations. Jackson got it, got her, like nobody else did. She had the same careful facade, same spotless record, same control.

She was really gonna look good in their wedding pictures.

Did he love her? No. Love was an even bigger weakness than compassion. But he knew a good prize when he saw one.

As if on cue, his phone rang, Eminem and Rihanna just loud enough to catch his attention. Dropping his towel, he walked totally nude to his spotless desk and answered it, putting it on speaker because he knew it annoyed her. Lydia 0 - Jackson 1 at the open.

“Am I on speaker?” Lydia immediately demanded, sounding petulant before he even got a single word out.

“Hi to you too,” he purred back, pulling on his sweatpants. He roved around his room, picking up his towel, waking up his computer with an impatient flick of his keyboard. He smiled to himself as Lydia huffed at him.

“You sure you don’t want to come over tonight? I miss sucking your delicious...” she wheedled, echoing that purr in his voice, knowing perfectly well she might be overheard. That usually did the trick, and tonight was no different; he grabbed his phone and held it up to his ear, before she could explain exactly _what_ she missed sucking.

“Jesus, Lydia, you know Carol likes to eavesdrop.”

“Then you shouldn’t put me on speaker,” she retorted, scoring the point. Lydia 1 - Jackson 1. Of course he huffed impatiently, just like she had, conceding her the point and crossing back to his desk.

“I really can’t come over. I’ve got an econ paper due. Fifteen hundred words of bullshit about bull markets.”

“Please, you can bat out fifteen hundred words of bullshit while doing pullups. I miss you.”

He could hear the playful pout in her voice, and smirked to himself. Another aspect to control, another way to make sure he had it all.

“Friday after the party,” he promised her smoothly, opening up his word processing software and titling the bullshit almost absent-mindedly.

“Hmm. Okay. What did you think of Allison?”

Ah. And now they were at the real purpose of the call. He could tell by the off-handed way she dropped it, sounding utterly bored and indifferent. So he dropped his own variation on the game, knowing what it would do to Lydia. He made sure to type loud enough to be heard over the phone, to keep that same indifferent tone to match hers.

“She’s okay. She’s cute.”

Silence, for just long enough to know that his volley had landed precisely where he wanted it to. He would call himself shameless, but that would require knowing what shame was in the first place, and there was no room for that in his life.

“You think she’s cute?” And there was the crack in the veneer. Lydia 1 - Jackson 2 in the first half.

“Yeah,” he answered glibly, the half smile and half shrug evident even over the phone. “You know, kind of a girl next door, dimples and apple pie, boring as shit cute.”

He could sense Lydia relax, and it just made him preen in his power. That was how they kept each other hooked, and he wouldn’t give it up for the world. Matching wits with Lydia Martin, the smartest person in six counties, and winning.

He was able to tune out her chatter as he typed; the rest of the conversation didn’t matter. He’d grunt an agreement or disagreement, as needed, but really, it had ended the second he’d won the final point.

He had it all. 

And he had every intention of keeping it all. No matter what it cost.

Oh, not costing _him_. But other people? Sure.

***

Oooh, this was gonna cost him.

Stiles frowned to himself again, pulling his t-shirt down over his miraculously _fully-closed-after-two-days bear bite._ He had been freakin’ documented as suffering deep puncture wounds and lacerations, which required a total of forty-two stitches. (The answer to life, the universe, and everything…) He was due for a follow-up appointment in two weeks. How in the livid, swollen hell was he supposed to waltz back into the clinic and declare himself healed? And not only healed, but his body literally pushed the stitches out through his new, undamaged skin?

I swear, Doctor, I just watched a lot of The 700 Club late at night. Lord be praised!

He didn’t see that going over very well at all.

Stiles Stilinski had to face the very real fact that shit was getting seriously weird, and he had only one solid lead. A solid lead that pointed to him becoming a creature out of fiction and growing the world’s worst facial hair. Which, to be completely frank here, wasn’t so much a lead as it was wishful thinking. He hit up his trusty internet again, hours after he was supposed to be asleep. The glow of the laptop’s screen made him look pale and blue under his comforter, as he probed the site of the wound with his fingers for the ninth time. And for the ninth time, his fingers found only unmarked, unscarred flesh.

And he had no idea how to explain it. 

His Google-Fu failed him, because no matter what combination of words he thought of, no matter what medical journals he sourced, there was no example, anywhere, of human tissue spontaneously regenerating.

Except in his beloved comic books.

...Shit. He was turning into Deadpool.

Finally, he had to give up. He had to let this go for the night and at least attempt to sleep. He slept badly at the best of times, and this was definitely not qualifying. Adderall had the unfortunate side-effect of keeping him buzzed for hours, and therefore REM sleep was an elusive unicorn.

...Shit, maybe he was turning into a unicorn.

Closing the laptop plunged his little comforter cave into blackness, and he curled up on his side. (His other side, not his bear-bitten side. That made it feel too real.) If he closed his eyes, he could ignore the lack of pain he’d gotten used to in a surprisingly short time.

Close your eyes, Stilinski, and sleep.

Close your eyes, Stilinski.

Close….

Oh.

He opened his eyes, and his fingers curled into the dew-wet dead leaves on the ground beneath him. It was beyond disorienting, it felt like a dream suddenly made real. He wasn’t in his nice warm bed, with his alarm blaring at him to start the day. Nope. He was in the forest. In the forest, in his t-shirt and plaid pajama pants and his bare feet and fuck all else.

Stiles tasted his pulse in the back of his throat, panicked. The sun was rising, casting a faint glow along the forest floor, anemic through the fog that had settled overnight. He sat up quickly, and then yelped with pain as he barked his forehead against the underside of the fallen tree trunk he’d been curled up in. Groaning, he slowly eased himself back down, rubbing his head and trying to get his bearings. One clear glance around was all it took. He knew at once he was on the edge of the preserve near the school, right where the Golden Heights gated community was. He recognized it right away, he and Scott would wander around out here after school when lacrosse wasn’t happening. 

How. In the hell.

How?

He had to resist the urge to scream like a girl and audibly freak out. Instead, he just bit down on one fist, and shook and shook and shook. Last thing he remembered was telling himself to sleep and now…he wasn’t dreaming, the bump on his head proved that.

Finally, he managed to get the worst of it under control.

“Okay,” he said to himself in an undertone. “No cell phone. Close to the school. Obviously I went sleepwalking. Happens. It happens. It happens all the time to completely normal people who aren’t suffering from a fatal case of the weirds. Just get to the school, get to the principal’s office, and deal with the ultimate humiliation of going to school in your pajamas later.”

He had to get on the phone to his father. Maybe it was time to look into...other possibilities. Like what had happened to his mom.

No.

He was not dealing with _that_ simply because he was sleepwalking. Sure, she had too, once upon a time, but this was different. It just was. After all, she’d never had a wound suddenly close itself up, or gain the ability to hear and smell things she shouldn’t.

He wasn’t dealing with his mother’s disease. He just wasn’t. There was overactive imagination, and then there was just morbid dwelling.

Slipping out of his weird resting spot, Stiles picked his barefooted way across the forest floor, wincing a little each time he found a twig or pebble. Fortunately, the leaves were thick on the ground, and soft from the dew, so it wasn’t constant or terrible, but he could still whine about it in his own head.

Speaking of his own head, he was making a beeline to his therapist ASAP after this night’s work.

Stiles let out a slow breath, and started hiking toward the school, knowing as only a local boy could which direction to set off in. And the whole time, he was grumbling to himself, covering the fear with annoyance. Better to be bitchy than be terrified.

“For real, though,” he said clearly to the sleeping trees around him. “This shit is Gwen Stefani. I’m just like any other red-blooded, all-American teenage male. I like porn and sports and cars and girls and video games. What the hell did I do to deserve any of this? Answer in triplicate, submitted by Friday, please and thank...you…”

He trailed off, because the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and a scent hit him that was unlike anything else he’d experienced so far. Feral, unwashed, thick and musky and choking, hitting his sinuses like a brick. He gagged a little, instinctively backing up and away from it. That was when he spotted it. A low figure, mostly hidden in the fog, with arms and legs bent the wrong way round, a pointed muzzle, mangy fur bristling along its hunched back.

And the eyes. The glowing, red eyes. The eyes he’d stared into before he’d hit the bear with a tree branch.

In the light of day, the thing that bit him was even more terrifying than it was in the dark. Sure, the imagination could cook up horrors when the monster went unseen, Jaws proved that. But then again, the cold fact of seeing is believing was certainly giving imagination a run for its money.

Stiles didn’t scream. Amazingly, he didn’t scream. Instead, he started to run. His brain, always whirring away even when he didn’t want it to, got itself and his limbs into high gear. One bite was bad enough. This time, he had a feeling the creature wanted to finish the job. 

It was like being back on the lacrosse field the day before. Everything slowed to a crawl as he worked it all out. His body, weedy at the best of times, reacted with a power he’d never had in his life. Muscles and bone and sinew worked together for once, and he ran with a grace and efficiency that a small part of his scattered attention wondered at. Another part of his attention caught details in the forest he’d missed before, broken branches and clawed bark. Huh. The bear-werewolf-whatever must have done that. And yet another part of his attention screeched that he was being chased by the furry asshole and to _please run faster._

Stiles ran faster. He dodged around trees, leaped over bushes and barely noticed the tiny scratches he was gathering all over his bare feet and arms and hands. He was running faster than a human should be able to, and yet the thing gained. The thing was gaining on him, _the thing was gaining on him oh god._

It happened in two flashes. One flash, he saw the barrier. The second flash, he was over it, legs propelling him fifteen feet in the air with an effortless bound. The flat of his palm braced against the top of the wooden fence, helping gravity glance away for just a second longer, helping his newly-powerful body fly along. His legs were already in motion for when he thought he would hit the ground. He didn’t hit the ground. Instead, he was suddenly plunged into a freezing cold pool of water, in over his head before he could even gasp. Which was probably for the best, because a lungful of water while being chased by a nightmare wasn’t such a grand idea.

Flailing, panicking, and disoriented, Stiles struggled to find the surface, to get his up and down in the proper order. It was doubly distressing, because all his senses were cut off. No sense of smell or hearing, he had no idea if the beast was about to leap in after him. And what the hell, where did this pond come from, he knew the reservoir was miles from here, and…

His head broke the surface of the water, and he gasped in a deep breath, blinked the chlorinated water out of his eyes.

...Chlorinated?

Oh.

He finally saw the nebbish of a man watering his garden (in January?) absently. The man was too busy staring at the flailing teenager currently treading water in his pool, to focus on his hydrangeas. (Which, again. Why was the pool not covered up in January? The man must enjoy giant power bills to defrost an iced-over pool.)

“...Morning!” Stiles chirped at the man, whose jaw dropped open in shock. Always leave ‘em riveted, as a wise man once said. “Silly question, but...can I borrow your phone?”

***

Scott pulled to a stop outside the Golden Heights community, to discover a very damp and disheveled Stiles squatting on the sidewalk outside the gate. Stiles’ chin was in his hands, and he looked like he’d seen a ghost, pale and blinking.

Scott’s mom had reluctantly loaned him the keys to the car for the morning, with the strict instructions he have it back before school started, and why are you running errands this early anyway? Fortunately, they had a good half an hour before the bell rang, which gave them time. Sort of.

He hustled out of the car, grabbing the sneakers and the jeans Stiles had requested, and skidded to a stop in front of his best friend.

“Dude, what the hell? Are you okay?”

Stiles looked up and put a giant, fake grin on his face, all teeth and manic eye rolling. He snatched the shoes out of Scott’s slack grip, and started pulling them on, lacing them up tightly.

“Sure! I’m fine! I just went for a little stroll in the woods all night, don’t remember a thing, and got chased into Mr. Reyes’ pool by the thing that bit me and ruined my life. And wow, your feet are stupidly huge, Scott.”

Scott was well used to Stiles’ sarcasm by now, he’d had eleven years of it under his belt. But even that pronouncement threw him, and his expression went a little hazy with concern. 

“Oh my god. You saw it? You saw the thing that bit you?”

“Yeah. Get in the car, we gotta go.”

Leave it to Scott to suss out the most important part of this whole hot (well, rather, wet and cold) mess. Shivering slightly, Stiles slid into the back seat of Melissa’s Taurus, and Scott took the wheel. They had twenty minutes to get back to Scott’s house, get to Stiles’ house, grab the jeep and get to school. Things did not look good for Homestar Runner. Stiles twisted himself into pretzel shapes to pull off his still-damp sweats and into Scott’s slightly too big jeans. Scott glanced at him in the rear-view every so often as they drove.

“Okay, start at the beginning,” Scott said, trying to stay calm. He was the one who did that, after all. Scott was the level-headed one, while Stiles was the one that cooked up the trouble. No change here, after all this time.

“The beginning.” Stiles pouted thoughtfully, trying to wrestle his wild-horse thoughts into a harness, and get them to the gate in order. “Okay. Last night, the stitches in my bite fell out.”

“What? That’s impossible, stitches don’t fall out forty-eight hours after they’re put in. No way.”

In answer, Stiles lifted up his shirt, revealing his healed torso. Scott glanced, gasped, and nearly drove them up the sidewalk. With a yelp, Stiles lowered his shirt and sat forward.

“Watch it! Right, okay, I get it, but please don’t freak out on me now, Scott. I really don’t want to explain to your mom that you wrecked her car.”

“Sorry! Right. Sorry.” Both boys took steadying breaths, trying to calm themselves back down. “So...okay. Your bear bite is magically healed. How?”

“No clue. I was up until about midnight doing research on it, nothing…” Stiles briefly outlined what had happened after that, which prompted a low whistle from Scott. Scott was the dictionary definition of gullible, but he also knew when Stiles was fucking with him. This wasn’t it.

“You...you really think this is that lycanthropy thing you were telling me about?”

“...Scott. You actually used the right word! I’m so proud of you right now.”

“Oh my god.” Scott rolled his eyes, took the turn to his block. “Stop being so sarcastic for two seconds, please!”

“Can’t help it, built in, you’ll have to do a full factory reset to get rid of it.”

“If that means hitting you in the head, I volunteer.”

Stiles couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing, feeling a hell of a lot better about everything all of the sudden. Scott’s sense of humor was occasionally doofy, but also occasionally sharp as a knife. Got it from his mother, honestly, Stiles just helped hone it. He flopped back down in the back seat, flouting the seat belt laws for just a little bit. He was a werewolf, he was allowed to ride in a car unbuckled.

He was a werewolf.  
The reality hit him, and there was a moment where he almost felt like he was going to burst into tears. If this was true, everybody would think he was crazy. Nobody could know about this. Only Scott. Scott could be trusted to keep his mouth shut, sure, but now he had to live his life with this terrible secret. Just as he was about to start blubbering, though, Scott pulled up to his house. Melissa was at the front door, in her scrubs, tapping her foot and tapping her watch face.

“Shit.”

Scott and Stiles both hustled out of the car, stumbling over each other to get away from the wrath of Melissa McCall. She walked forward, the picture of strangely frazzled calm, the kind only an ER nurse can have, and held out one hand. Scott dropped the keys to the car into it, with a big, innocent smile.

“Thanks, mom!” he chirped, darting in to kiss one cheek and run away, Stiles hot on his heels.

“Hold it!” she barked, and both boys froze, turned back to her sheepishly. “Stiles. Good morning. What’s going on and why are you wearing Scott’s clothes?”

“Uh.” Stiles’ mind ran a mile a minute, and it hit him. Lying through his teeth, but what else was new, he cooked up a story right there on the spot. “I lost a bet. With Sam Temple, you know him, he’s on the lacrosse team, well he bet me I couldn’t eat fifteen hot dogs at lunch yesterday, and I lost, and so I had to go for a jog in my shorts this morning. Scott rescued me.”

Scott nodded along with this story, guileless as always, and Melissa narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She knew Stiles far too well, after all, as only the mother of his best friend could know another child.

“I see. Well, you two have fifteen minutes to get to school, and I’m not signing off on any tardy slips. Move it.” And with that, she got in the Taurus and was gone. Both boys breathed an identical sigh of relief, and high-fived each other as she pulled away.

“Fifteen hot dogs? Really?”

“Sounds like something Temple would do, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. For sure.”

“I think ninety percent of the guy is sheer fat. He’d make a great goalie.”

“C’mon, dude, we gotta go.”

“Right.” Stiles took another deep breath as Scott turned back into the house to go grab his bookbag. They were definitely going to be late to school, but at least he hadn’t been attacked again. Things were moving too fast for him now, and he just wanted a chance to rest. Really rest.

God, he was lucky his father had been on a graveyard last night, and he’d never know about this.

***

The school day was, blessedly, uneventful. Oh, sure, it was full once again of the usual sensory distractions, but day two of this nonsense was starting to bring some sense of normalcy to it. God, wasn’t that just the weirdest thing? The human brain was capable of so many things, including being a-OK with sensory overload. It was strange, he found if he didn’t focus on it, he could almost turn it off. Or at the very least ignore it. And it wasn’t until after lacrosse practice that it all came to a head again.

He hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary, honestly. He’d just sucked less than usual, that was all. He could run now, and his aim was improved exponentially. He wasn’t using super-strength or anything, he just could keep himself upright, instead of tripping over his own two feet. Which was a feat of its own, as far as he was concerned. If getting bitten by a werewolf meant he could actually be competitive and contribute to his team, then bring on the wolfsbane. (Wait, no, that made a wolf weak. Or was it stronger? He couldn’t remember.) So, yeah, he’d kept the points scored to the low double digits, even if he did sneak one or two by Danny when it should have been impossible.

He should have known that would be the proverbial camel-breaker.

For once, he and Scott weren’t attached at the hip; Scott had dashed home to get a start on his homework, which Stiles wasn’t exactly believing. Something was up, and he suspected it had everything to do with Allison Argent. Heh. Well, hopefully Scottie was getting his sext on. Good for him. So Stiles was alone in the locker room after practice, pulling off his jersey to stash in his locker.

The scent of the locker room muffled all the smells. Or rather, the stench of many unwashed, sweaty teenage boys overwhelmed the subtler scents, like an approaching douchebag. But his footsteps were loud enough as Jackson stomped over. Stiles turned, or started to, when Jackson slammed his locker door shut and pushed Stiles up against the harsh metal.

“All right, little man,” he started, already going for the insults. Stiles didn’t bother fighting back; even with his new strength and agility, getting pushed around by Jackson Whittemore was a lifelong habit, and as such was hard to break. “How about you tell me where you’re getting your juice?”

Stiles blinked. Of all the accusations he’d been expecting from Jackson, that was nowhere near the top ten.

“What?” he asked, not really sure he was hearing Jackson right.

“Where. Are you getting. Your _juice?_ ” Jackson repeated, blinking and widening his eyes, like he was about to be let in on a secret. And Stiles, god. He couldn’t help laughing out loud, right in Jackson’s face.

“Orange or cran-apple?” he asked, rolling his eyes and shrugging out of Jackson’s grip. Jackson just doubled-down, grabbing Stiles again and pressing him back against the line of lockers a second time.

“Now listen, Stilinski,” he said, trying for reasonable, but the threat still hung over them both. “You’re gonna tell me exactly what it is, and who you’re buying it from, because there’s no way in hell you’re out there, kicking ass on the field like that, without some sort of chemical boost.”

Stiles had been called many things in his life, but a drug user? ...Well, yes, because of his Adderall. But never what Jackson was outright accusing.

“Hold on,” he said, a disbelieving smirk blooming on his lips. “You think I’m...on steroids? Me? _The son of the county sheriff?_ ”

He could see that little twist hit Jackson, and the wheels turned just a little bit further. That was the problem with Jackson, he was worse than the typical brainless bully. He was fucking smart, and thus that made him even more formidable.

“Yeah, well, for all I know, you have a key to an evidence room or something,” Jackson countered.

“No way,” Stiles snotted back. “My dad made sure the evidence room went to biometrics two years ago.” Because Stiles had actually once gotten a key and snuck in about two years ago, but that wasn’t the point. Of course, that seemed to be the end of Jackson’s patience. He punched the locker behind Stiles’ head, hard, and Stiles couldn’t help but flinch, since it was so goddamn loud against his sensitive ears.

“What the hell is going on with you, Stilinski!?” Jackson demanded, his freckled nose just inches from Stiles’. And that was as far as Stiles’ patience could go. He felt all the weirdness, the frustration, the terror well up in him, and he saw red.

“You wanna know what’s going on with me?” he exploded, yelling in Jackson’s startled face. It wasn’t often that people yelled back at him, so it was a relatively new experience. “You really wanna know? Well, _so would I!_ ”

That caused Jackson to let go, back up a step, confusion registering on his perfect features. But now that the dam had been breached, there was no holding back the flood. Stiles felt the words flowing out of him, spilling the secret he’d sworn only hours before belonged to Scott alone. And he was telling it to his worst enemy.

“I can see, hear, and smell things that I shouldn’t be able to see, hear, and smell. I’m doing things that should be impossible! I’m sleepwalking _three miles_ into the middle of the woods! And I’m pretty much convinced that I’m out of my freakin’ mind!”

And with that Stiles panted, let out a little whimper and thumped his head against the locker. Fuck. Well, at least he hadn’t started crying, as desperately as he needed to. There it was, Jackson now knew that he was developing the werewolf equivalent of superpowers. Shit was really gonna hit the fan now.

Except that Jackson wasn’t buying the bullshit that Stiles was peddling. He huffed an incredulous little laugh and shook his head.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you, Stilinski? I know you’re hiding something. I’m gonna find out what it is, I don’t care what it takes.” For good measure, Jackson slammed the locker again, and then slugged Stiles on the shoulder hard. And then he was walking away.

Everything was terrible and everything hurt, thank you very much. Stiles could feel a bruise forming on his shoulder where Jackson had hit him, and then that bruise was throbbing and fading away into nothing. Excellent. He had the power to heal subcutaneous bleeding in seconds. That’d definitely win him a place on the Avengers.

Too bad this was real life.

“Fuck me,” he sighed, wiping his hands down his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on tumblr at [bitsyfic.](http://bitsyfic.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, I'm sad I had to drop the "my mom does all the grocery shopping" line, but I hope this is a fairly good substitute.


	6. Chapter 6

`how u doin`

Scott stared at his phone, waiting for the answer. When he and Allison had exchanged numbers last night, it was all he could do to stop from texting her right away. He really was trying to play it cool, but he couldn’t help himself. Everything about her just grabbed his full attention and pulled. After her breakdown at the clinic, after she’d cried on him, after he’d loaned her his sweater, he was really hoping she’d at least text back. His hands trembled and his heart thumped along in his chest like it was trying to win a decathalon.

He’d never been in love before. He’d never nursed so much as a gentle crush. Sure, there were some girls that had made him pay attention, but nothing like this. Nothing like Allison. It felt like she was here on this planet for him, and he was put here for her. If he could throw himself across a grenade for her, he’d do it in a second. Anything she wanted, he’d try to give. Life was beautiful that way, to be honest. Every now and then the clouds would part...and the perfect person would just stroll into your life. Scott believed that with all his heart. He had to, otherwise love was too messy, too hurtful, too hard.

His parents were proof of that.

He swallowed against a nervous tic in his cheek, biting down a little and stretching his mouth out.

“Calm down, it’s cool, be cool,” he chanted to himself, unable to stop staring at the screen of his phone. Ten seconds went by, and the screen dimmed, went black. No response. He sighed, and flopped down on his bed, phone still firmly in hand. He rolled into his pillow and groaned. Well, now he knew what all the fuss was about. Teenage angst had finally claimed Scott McCall, and the result wasn’t pretty.

` im good `

The phone buzzing in his hand, the screen lighting up, was everything Scott had desired and a whole lot more, his heart jumping into his throat and staying there. He couldn’t resist the giant grin that took over his whole face, his whole soul, as Allison replied. And then she replied _again_ , an unheard of miracle.

`how are you?`

Oh man. Greatest love story of all time, starting right here. He sat up again, bouncing on the edge of his mattress, phone cradled in both hands like it was the Hope Diamond or something.

`good. doing my homework. u?`

He hit send before he realized that was the second time he’d asked her how she was doing, and bit back a groan as he slapped his forehead with the flat of his hand. Smooth, McCall. Really smooth. Fortunately, Allison and all the teenage hormone gods were feeling generous that day.

`yeah me too. algebra not my favorite lol`

`u have sanders or anderson?`

`anderson she’s ok`

The texts were flying faster now, and it made Scott’s heart march in time. This wasn’t just some random “hi” text, this was legitimately happening, a real back and forth that could lead to something special. 

`dude what up`

Stiles.

Scott sighed and automatically started typing into the new chat bubble. Because if he didn’t answer Stiles right away, then there’d be a flurry of increasingly-frantic texts, with the end result of a sky blue jeep parked in his driveway.

`nothing kinda busy rn`

There was a pause from Stiles, as another text came in from Allison. Wow. Scott McCall had a social life. Wonder of wonders.

`hey what did you get for question 6 in chem homework?`

`dude how can you be busy with nothing`

Scott sighed. He was being cock-blocked by his best friend. Life wasn’t fair anymore. He was going to kill Stiles. 

`texting allison i’ll bug you later`

There was another pause and then another alert.

`i know you’re texting me lol what`

Scott’s eyes darted to the top of his phone screen, and he felt his heart sink into somewhere around his knees. He’d sent that in the wrong window. He was going to _kill_ Stiles.

` lol sorry that was meant for stiles`

Hopefully that was enough to cover his gaffe, even as he copied the earlier message and pasted it into the _right_ chat. Hoping his best friend took the damn hint and bugged him later. Much. Much later. Next semester later. Next school year after that later.

` oh lol well you don’t have to blow him off just for me`

End of the next _Ice Age_ later.

` no it’s cool uh i haven’t done the chem homework yet`

No answer.

No answer.

Two. Three. Five minutes. No answer. Craaaaaaaap. Scott flopped back down on his bed, face up, and groaned out loud. Then he sat back up and reached for his inhaler because he just sort of winded himself with that move. Two quick puffs, and then he was back down again, hands over his face as he growled his frustration to his palms. 

His phone buzzed again. He rushed to sit up, making himself a little dizzy, and saw it was Stiles apologizing for interrupting his sexting flow. Which, first of all, too late, and second of all they hadn’t even _gotten_ there! Scott deliberately read the message so Stiles would know he’d seen it, and then turned his phone off for the night. That was the rule, anyway; homework time meant phone off time. Hopefully Allison wouldn’t suddenly text back. Maybe tomorrow they could…

The doorbell rang.

Scott peeked out from his room, door open just a crack, as his mom answered the door. At the angle Scott was at, he couldn’t see who was at the door, but his mother’s greeting solved the mystery.

“Noah, hi. Is everything okay?” The sheriff was at the door, never a good sign. In fact, Melissa instantly looked up the stairs, where she confirmed Scott was. In fact, they made eye contact, and she shooed him back into his room.

Scott did as he was told, closing the door behind him. It genuinely never occurred to him to listen in on that conversation, either. 

***

“Noah, hi. Is everything okay?”

“Hey, Melissa. Yeah. No. Sort of.”

Melissa shot a look upstairs, to make sure her son was where he was supposed to be, before waving him off and opening the door further.

“Come in. Want some coffee?”

“That’d be great.”

Noah Stilinski walked in, shoulders slumped a little against the stress, the chill in the January air. He shed his jacket and hung it next to the door, pulling out an 8x10 manilla envelope as he did, for all the world making himself comfortable. Melissa smiled to herself as she moved to the kitchen, got the coffee pot brewing. They both worked crazy schedules, so a little late-night caffeine didn’t throw either of them off. Sleep? Who needed sleep in this town? Besides, the fact that he’d said he wasn’t okay was enough to trigger that mothering instinct. They knew each other well, and had a lot of affection for each other, forged under circumstances that shouldn’t have been. For either of them.

“What’s going on?”

The sheriff settled himself on the edge of the kitchen table, arms crossed over his chest, his face even more careworn than usual. He was ageing, but then again, wasn’t she? She had no room to judge the extra wrinkles on his forehead.

“We’re no closer to a positive ID on the girl that was killed the other night. Only now...I don’t know. The ME said it was an animal attack. But...here.”

He opened that envelope and pulled out three pictures, slightly curled in on themselves. The first one was an obviously dismembered leg. Melissa didn’t so much as flinch. She’d seen what was left of the victim in person, after all. She’d even noted how oddly-shaped the vic’s toenails were. But Noah wasn’t being macabre, he had a point.

“There,” he said, pointing at the flesh of the upper thigh. “That ring of marks. Bite marks, right?”

Melissa peered closer, seeing the semi-circle of marks along the skin. But it was wrong, somehow. It took her a second, and then she twigged.

“But they look old. Half-healed.”

Noah smiled, relieved. He wasn’t going crazy, Melissa noticed it too.

“Exactly. As if she’d been bitten days or even weeks ago, before she was torn to pieces. Which makes absolutely no sense.”

“Exsanguination?” Melissa guessed, throwing out a wild theory. “Blood loss making it look cleaner than it actually was?”

“I thought of that too, but...no. The wounds are almost closed.”

She frowned, unable to draw any sort of logical conclusion to that. Noah was almost suggesting that the poor girl had rapidly healed somehow while being torn to pieces by a rabid animal. Like what’s his name in Greek mythology, constantly getting his liver eaten by wild birds. This mystery made about as much sense as that myth.

Then Noah pulled out the second picture, which was of the location where the legs were found. The trees all around were half-torn up, scratched all to hell. The ground was a muddy slush, cleared of leafy debris. As if the entire area had been the site of some god-awful brawl between two giant bears.

“...With that much destruction, you’d think somebody would have heard something,” she said, staring at the mess in the picture. Noah nodded again in satisfaction, another puzzle piece slotting into place. It was nice to have somebody as observant and intelligent as Melissa confirming his wild first and second thoughts.

“This doesn’t look like a bear attacking a human. It looks like two animals attacking each other. So did our vic hear it and go to investigate? Or was she simply at the wrong place in the wrong time?”

And with that, he pulled out the third picture. This one, Melissa knew well, since she’d taken it herself. It was a picture of Stiles, grinning proudly at the camera, his shirt half hiked up his torso, showing off the bite wound he’d suffered. The stitches were little black X-s across his pale skin, the loose ends of the suture bristling out from his body. And as she looked, Noah slid the first picture back into her view.

The placement of the wounds was the same. Same ring of teeth, same spacing, same size. There was even a particularly jagged edge to the far right wound, as if the teeth were slightly crooked there. A perfect match.

“Whatever killed the girl…”

“Attacked Stiles.” Noah’s voice was flat and emotionless, which was what truly alarmed Melissa. He never sounded like that, with one very notable exception. The coffee pot gurgled its last, and she steadied herself with one hand against his shoulder as she stood. A moment later, she slid a mug into his hands, the coffee just barely colored with some cream.  
“So now what?” she asked, pouring out her own mug.

“I’m going to be in touch with Fish and Game up in Sacramento,” he said, his voice softening just a little bit. “We’ll have to apply for the right permits to shoot the animal. Animals. And if they won’t give it to me…”

He trailed off, eyes staring off into middle distance at nothing visible. Or his own little slice of hell, perhaps.

“I’ll do it anyway.”

Melissa sighed, but nodded. She might very well have been in the same state of mind, if Scott had been the one bitten. The difference was, she wasn’t the elected sheriff of the county. Noah could be in some seriously deep shit if he went off slaughtering wild animals. So she anticipated his next question.

“What I need to know is…”

“What kind of animal is it,” she finished, nodding slowly. “I’ll be honest, I couldn’t tell you just at a glance. I mean, it’s got a muzzle that’s wider than an average canine bite. Way wider than ursine, too. Honestly, it looks like it might be a big cat. Mountain lion, cougar...maybe?”

Noah grimaced, but nodded again. He really had been hoping that Melissa would have what he needed to start his hunt. But she was a nurse, not a forensic examiner, as dearly as he would have loved her to be. Hell, even Rafael probably couldn’t have...ugh, don’t go there.

“You should talk to Dr. Deaton,” she said, interrupting his train of thought. “Scott’s boss? The vet. He’d probably be able to give you a better idea as to the animal.”

“...That’s a good idea. I mean, he seems like an okay guy. You think he’d be able to ID our fuzzy perp?”

Melissa laughed a little, hands curled around her coffee mug. She always kept the heat in the house turned way, way down, so this little bit of warmth went a long way.

“I love it when you talk cop to me,” she teased, gratified to see Noah’s ears go a little pink. “But yeah, he’s probably your go-to. Sorry. Wish I could do more.”

“You already have. Thanks, Mel.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a short, companionable silence, as they both saw the maybe, the almost, the never would be. She’d met him at the worst possible time in their lives. Her fresh from her divorce, him caring for an ill wife. And that wedding band around his finger spoke further volumes. Melissa was powerfully attracted to him...and would never act on it. Besides, they were very busy people, who had time to date in this economy?

“One more cup?” she offered, tempting him to stay just that much longer anyway.

“Nah, I gotta run. But thank you.”

“No problem. Keep me posted on Stiles’ stitches? Make sure nothing gets infected.”

“Yeah.” He took one last big gulp of his coffee, and then poured what little was left down the sink as he turned to go. But then he paused, head dropped, shoulders slumped. Just as he’d looked when he first knocked on the door. Melissa’s heart broke for him.

“If I find the animal that did this, I’m killing it. Whether or not I have permission. _That could have been Stiles._ ”

And then he was gone, after showing her that giant breach in the walls around his heart. He was so protective of his boy...and hid it so well. Melissa sighed, flicked off the coffee pot, and turned off the lights in the kitchen, leaving her in the dark for a moment. Hidden in shadow, like the mysteries in this stupid little town.

***

Stiles was half asleep in front of his computer when the phone downstairs rang. Landline call. Police business.

Thundering down the stairs two at a time, he was breathless with anxiety as he grabbed the phone. He knew damn well his father wasn’t home yet, and he knew damn well he wasn’t supposed to be answering the phone. 

“Stilinski residence!” he panted into the receiver, letting the adrenaline of his rebellion flood him.

“Is Sheriff Stilinski there?” The voice was male, and slightly alarmed by the huffing teenager who’d answered the call. Not a voice that Stiles recognized, either. This wasn’t somebody from the station.

“Not in at the moment, but I can take a message?” 

The voice on the other end hesitated.

“I tried at the station, but they said he would be home by now.”

“Must be stuck in traffic. I’m his son. I can take a message.” C’mon. Hint. Hint.

Another brief pause, but then the man continued. Stiles could almost hear his careless shrug over the line, the sense of giving up and giving in. He pumped his fist in the air as the voice spoke.

“This is Caleb Trotta with the ME’s office in Fresno. We’ve finished the fiber analysis requested, and the material came back positive as _canis lupis lupis._ ”

It was Stiles’ turn to hesitate, as if he was struggling to write things down quickly. He wasn’t. He was letting it all sink in, the final piece of the puzzle as to what was happening to him. Canis lupis lupis. God, that was the nail in the coffin. Or the silver bullet. He had definitely been bitten by a wolf. A werewolf. And whoever the girl had been, the girl that was killed? 

Had been torn apart by a werewolf.

“Hello?”

That quick inquiry brought Stiles back to the present, and he coughed a little.

“Sorry, writing it down. Is there a number he can call you back?”

The man rattled off a number in the 559 area code, which Stiles promptly forgot. And his fingers and lips were a little numb as he hung back up. The trudge back up the stairs was considerably heavier than the flight down them, as the reality came crashing home. This wasn’t just a fiction anymore. That thing that had chased him in the woods...that was a werewolf. Which meant the things could appear at any time, not just on a full moon. 

There were no wolves in California.

Truth. There were no _canis lupis lupis_. But clearly there were _canis lupis lycanis._ Clearly. And he’d just joined their ranks. The enhanced sense of smell, the hearing, the healing. This was all just the lead up into...the full moon. Which was tomorrow night. He was going to become like that thing in the woods. Would he hunger for human flesh? Would he attack and bite anybody who got too close?

Oh, god. His dad.

Oh, god. Scott.

He was instantly nauseated by the all-too-visceral vision that hit him in that moment. Out of control, a slavering beast of legend, tearing into his father’s throat, doing to Scott what had been done to the girl. Vivisected, that was the word. Scott’s body being found next. Or just half. Which was worse?

He had to disappear. Get out of there, out of the house, out of Beacon Hills. He had some cash saved up, and then...what? He’d just unleash his curse on strangers instead of family? That was only marginally better, but still a total fucking disaster. And then he wouldn’t have any support structure. If there was anything worse than being a teenage werewolf, it was a homeless teenage werewolf.

Nope. Not happening. Besides, his father would burn the world down if he disappeared. He had to go to school, pretend everything was normal. Pretend that there wasn’t some monster out there…

Wait.

What if he just told his dad the truth?

...What, it could happen!

Stiles’ busy bee of a brain ran through those ramifications as quickly as it could, and discarded them almost as fast. Best case scenario, Stiles would end up at Eichen House with a 72 hour hold, and then a lifetime of therapy and mind-altering meds, a thousand times more intense than any Adderall binge. Worst case, that 72 hours would wind up being indefinite, the sheriff would lose his pension spending it on his son’s incarceration. Worst worst _worst_ case, his father would believe him, and get himself killed turning himself into some wrathful werewolf hunter.

So. He had to keep this knowledge from his father about the fiber ident. He had to keep himself in control when he shifted into a mindless killing machine. He had to surround himself with people - soft, squishy, vulnerable people - to keep up the semblance of his normal life. And, bonus round, he had to keep up his grades and stay on the lacrosse team, otherwise he’d be grounded. And a grounded werewolf meant a stay at home werewolf. Which meant he couldn’t flee when he was most aggressive.

Because he knew he’d get aggressive. Wasn’t he already feeling the need to punch something? As hard as he could? Aside from everything else, being bullied by Jackson…

_Jackson._

Oh. Oh. Enhanced speed and strength and reflexes. Sure, it came along with bloody, animalistic horrors the likes of which no man should know, but _he could win at lacrosse now._ Hadn’t the first practice proven that? Sure, that meant Scott wouldn’t make first line, but maybe that meant he could take that asshole Whittemore down a peg or six.

Werewolf-shmearwolf. He _got_ this.

***

The whistle was practically soft as a pillow as Finstock blew it twice, gesturing for his recalcitrant team to huddle up.

“Let’s go, gather round! Bring it in, c’mon!”

Stiles was still on the bench, tying his cleats, pretending he didn’t know he was about to upend everybody’s expectations. He had a sly sort of smile on his face, one that he was keeping well hidden. He trotted over to the huddle, his helmet already on, as he saw Scott raise his hand to wave at Allison. Allison, who smiled and waved shyly back, as she made her way up to the bleachers to sit by Lydia.

“You got a question, McCall?”

“...What?” 

Stiles couldn’t help snickering to himself. Poor Scottie, he was off in his own little Allison-shaped universe.

“You raised your hand, do you have a question?” Finstock seemed to be taking some sort of perverse glee in singling Scott out, and Stiles wouldn’t doubt it one bit.

“Uh, no. I was just, uh….nothing. Sorry.” 

Poor, poor, delicate blossom Scott McCall. Coach shook his head and snorted, and then launched into his yearly diatribe.

“Okay. You know how this goes. If you don’t make the cut, you’re most likely sitting on the bench for the rest of the season. You _make_ the cut, you _play!_ Parents are _proud!_ Your girlfriend _loves ya!_ ”

Coach punctuated that last sentence by grabbing Connelly’s helmet by the grill and giving it a good shake, making the poor ginger’s neck wobble painfully. Ow. Even on the other side of the huddle, Stiles could hear joints popping, nothing to do with his super-ears.

“Yeah? Hey? Everything else is…. _cream cheese,_ ” Coach finished, poking Scott in the upper arm. Cream cheese, that was new. Usually Coach had a better button on the end of that little pep talk. He must be off his feed. Although the manic look in his eyes was at its usual level. Stiles adjusted his helmet again, and curled his hands into fists. Cream cheese. That’s what he was going to do to Jackson’s stupid attractive face; turn it into cream cheese.

“Now get out there...and show me whatcha got!”

And that prompted a manly, testosterone-driven cheer from the team, pumping themselves up to make that cream cheese happen. A snarl appeared on Stiles’ lips as he moved away to grab his stick, and a growl rose up from his throat. It felt so right, so very right, that he didn’t notice Scott’s look of alarm. 

The entire team started the mock game, taking sides and doing drills by some unspoken agreement. Of course Danny and Jackson ended up together, side by side. Of course Stiles and Scott ended up together, side by side. It was a shuffle, but soon opposing teams were roughly drawn out, and the try-out began in earnest. The ball started flying overhead, through the field like a speeding bullet. It was caught, passed, run. It ended up in Scott’s net by sheerest coincidence, and he started to make a goal run.

And then Scott was body-checked by Jackson a split-second before Stiles could get there, ending up flat on his back as Jackson gloated.

Final. Fucking. Straw.

Eventually it came down to Stiles facing Jackson over the ball, a scrimmage line forming to start play again. And that was when he struck. As Coach blew the whistle to get the play going, Stiles moved faster than a human naturally could, and had the ball in his net before Jackson even registered the noise. He was halfway up the field seconds later. Everything was moving in slow motion for him as he took off. It was so much _easier_ this way, god. His muscles didn’t protest the overuse, and never would again. His lungs drew and filtered air more efficiently than ever before in his life, his heart remained steady and true, never getting above 100 BPM. The goals scored the other day were great, but this was...this was _a gift._ Revenge and validation, all wrapped up in a neat and tidy package, as the entire student body watched. Let Jackson think he was on steroids. He knew the truth. That he was a werewolf, and he’d make the entire school howl his praises.

He could smell the fear-stink on Jackson. It hit him like a physical thing, a heady, sour punch to the gut and nose. He’d expected anger, and frustration, and hate. But fear? Jackson, afraid? Oh, he could get addicted on that, drunk on it. His lips curled up into a cruel smile, and he proceeded to wipe the floor with the entire team. Even Danny gave up eventually, just darting aside as he saw Stiles lob another flawless goal.

He saw Scott’s horrified expression just as the coach blew the whistle one last time, a kicked puppy sort of look. At first Stiles thought it was aimed at Jackson, but then with a sudden flash of sickening insight, Stiles realized Scott was horrified _at him._ Not _for_ him, for once, not mortified over some maladroit quip or klutzy tumble, but horrified at what Stiles was doing. It was like a slap to the face, or a cup of ice water doused on Stiles’ head. Scott had stood by him through everything, but already he could see the walls starting to go up. Worse, he could smell them now. Jackson’s fear was sweet; Scott’s fear was choking his air off in his throat.

Before he could process it anymore, though, he had Coach Finstock’s arm around his shoulders, giving him a manly sort of shake back and forth.

“Stilinski!” he bellowed, eyes alight with manic glee. “What the hell, kid? Did you get a Charles Atlas kit for Christmas?”

It wasn’t every sixteen year old kid that would know who Charles Atlas was, but got the reference anyway. He just smiled and shrugged weakly as he slid off his helmet, not making eye contact with the rest of the team.

“Nah, I just practiced. A lot,” he added lamely, trying now to downplay the perfection and inhuman reflexes he’d just displayed.

“Well, it’s certainly paid off!” said Coach, laughing almost incredulously, grinning a grin that showed off almost all his teeth. “Because you just made first line!”

Nobody reacted. The world held its breath for a long, long moment. There was no triumph anywhere, no cheers, no applause. Lydia Martin did not come rushing down the bleachers to throw her arms around him and say, ‘Take me I’m yours.’ There were no hosannas from on high, no blinding beams of light showing his perfect victory to the world. Instead, there was a low grumbling, mutterings of twenty-seven teenage boys, muffled behind collision-rated plastic and aluminum, lacrosse sticks dropping onto damp and muddy turf. It was the sort of resentful muttering that Stiles always used to take part in whenever he didn’t get picked for something, anything. Only now, there was a dangerous, violent quality to the resentment.

It wasn’t just that he’d gotten first line. It was that he’d made everybody else look totally fucking stupid doing it. He was one of the least popular kids in school, and he’d just humiliated the most popular, the most athletic, the guys with the actual power.

This was a bad. Bad. Very bad. Very very bad idea after all.

“Congrats,” murmured Scott, edging away from him, as the rest of the team hit the showers, and Coach yelled nonsensical, peppy words at them. There were no hugs, no punches to the arm, nothing. There was no tight-knit group celebration, a team coming together. There were now two teams in Beacon Hills; Stiles, and everybody else. He wasn’t feeling a slow, sinking feeling. No. Noooo. He felt like he was in free-fall, his stomach fluttering just below his Adam’s apple. Almost involuntarily, he turned to look at the bleachers. Lydia was not there. Allison was, and she was staring at him like she’d never seen anything like it in her life. Awed. Her mouth was hanging slightly open, and she licked her lips and blinked at him.

Shit.

Numbly, absently, he tugged his ineffective protective gear off, gloves and helmets and whatnot. Whatnot. What a great word. Numbly, absently, he started wandering away, not sure where he was headed. He was running over the last seventy minutes in his head, trying to erase it in self-defense. No dice. He saw exactly how he’d shown all the best players in school how he was better, thereby painting a giant target in between his shoulder blades. He saw the faintly-ill look Scott had leveled at him, like a tactical nuke.

When the forest just outside the athletic field closed over his head, he only absently acknowledged it, another data point that meant nothing. If he wandered away, maybe the werewolf would attack him again, and he could finally die and let go of this bullshit, this high school bullshit that he simultaneously rejected and subconsciously embraced. He was _better_ than high school. He was. He hated every second, and wanted to _win_ every second. The ultimate hypocrisy of high school.

He leaned back against a convenient tree, rubbing his hands over his face. He knew if he went back to the locker room now, he’d get the crap kicked out of him, regardless of his new powers. If he tried to change now, he’d either be beaten to holy hell, or ignored while an adult was present, promising retribution on another day. His grand plan to humiliate Jackson had morphed sickeningly into the roadmap to his own ass-kicking.

“Ffffffuck me,” he groaned, rubbing his hands over his face. Going so far as to scrape his fingernails down his forehead, before collapsing entirely. In a fetal position, he let out a long, slow breath, clenching his teeth together as he realized how thoroughly he’d fucked himself.

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?”

Oh. Stiles looked up as his internal monologue was voiced by somebody else. He looked up at a perfectly symmetrical face, clean shaven, with some epic damn eyebrows. That face was topped by a black slick of hair, and below that a white shirt and black leather jacket over impeccable blue jeans.

He was staring up at Derek Hale, and he groaned, defeated.

“Oh god, shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey guys what's going on in this fic?


	7. Chapter 7

“What the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?”

“...Oh, god. Shut up.”

Derek glowered over Stiles’ prone form, arms across his chest, as if that was the only thing holding back a tsunami of overwhelming emotion. Stiles could smell the fury and the disgust rolling of Derek in waves, and then.

And then.

“You little idiot. You can’t just show off that you’re a werewolf in front of the student body and God. You’re going to get yourself killed. All so you can score a few points at lacrosse?”

What.

“...What did you say?”

Stiles slowly lifted his head, mouth hanging open, and suddenly the underlying scent from Derek was clear. He hadn’t caught it the other day in the forest, because he hadn’t known what to look for, or even that he had to look for it. Now, he could sense it. Under the scent of fury and fear and leather was the unmistakeable scent of _other._ Not human. It was a deep, musky sort of scent, heady and subtle and oddly familiar. As if Stiles’ nose knew in advance exactly what was happening before his mind caught up. It was the angel-choir hosanna he’d expected on the field, only now it was Derek fucking Hale, with his stupid too-big leather jacket and glacial green eyes and cheese-slicer jaw line, confirming that, yes. There actually _were_ werewolves, thank you very much, and _Derek was also a werewolf._

In answer to Stiles’ thoroughly stupid question, Derek rolled his eyes, his impressive eyebrows cantilevering _down_ in the most epic non-verbal smack Stiles had ever gotten in his life. He reached down and yanked Stiles upright, holding him aloft by his jersey for just a beat too long, before Stiles found purchase and balance on his own two feet.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he repeated, stepping forward for emphasis, poking one finger right into Stiles’ upper chest, just above his heart. “Your first full moon is tonight. You’re going to be dangerous, and you’re advertising to the hunters like a neon sign. They won’t care that you’re just a kid. They’ll kill you the second they spot you alone. Get it?”

It was a lot to process, frankly. Stiles had already figured out what was happening to him, had already known he was going to be a furry menace to polite society. Had read about the blood lust and the maidens fair being ravaged under the light of the full moon. Had read about the uncontrollable urges that came along with the change, instincts that could not be ignored or diverted or stopped. He’d known, intellectually, that he was now truly, deeply dangerous. The question of what the fuck hunters were was tempered by a sudden, sweeping need to know one incredibly important thing.

“Did you do this to me?” he asked, afraid and defiant and angry. That seemed to shock Derek silly, the furious wind taken out of his lecturing sails. The older boy blinked, slunk back a half a pace, his shoulders hunching up. A truly canine posture, Stiles thought giddily.

“No.”

And Stiles could smell the truth of it. Derek had not been the one to bite him.

“Then who?”

“I...don’t know.”

That was a half-truth, and Stiles bristled. Now he was the one to step forward, crowding into Derek’s space, eyes blazing with golden light. He didn’t know his eyes were showing his shift, but he could feel his anger like a tangible thing, coiling around his lungs and heart.

“What do you mean, you don’t know? You do. You’re lying to me.”

“I’m not!” Derek’s returning anger was knife sharp and whip fast, and the words were a bit too hasty, too snarled. But Derek shook his head, and refused to be cowed, set his jaw and got nose to nose with Stiles. “I’m not lying. I really don’t know who the Alpha is now.”

That...that was true. But it meant that there was another werewolf out there, an Alpha. Which, if Stiles had researched correctly (he totally did), then this Alpha was going to be really bad news. Then again, he’d also discovered that the science and research behind the myth of alpha wolves was faulty at heart, so he was extra confused. Either that, or his brain was running in too many directions to make sense of all of this, which frankly he suspected.

“Who _was_ the Alpha?” Stiles asked, picking up on that. “If there’s a new one now. Who was the old one?”

Derek looked supremely uncomfortable, his eyebrows furrowing downwards again. The guy seemed to have an infinite number of grumpy expressions that could only be communicated via the medium of eyebrow. It was truly almost an artform.

“Let’s talk about this elsewhere,” he suggested, glancing around and taking a short breath through his nose. “Somewhere safe.”

“Wow, what?” Stiles finally took a step back, blinking and horrified. He’d seen too many after-school specials to let that slide. “Yeah, okay, bad touch. I’m not getting in your white windowless van, creeper. I don’t want to end up as a badly acted re-creation on America’s Most Wanted.”

Derek paled, and then scowled like he was this close to ripping Stiles’ head off with his bare hands. 

“You’re not funny,” he snarled, teeth bared in the most aggressive manner Stiles had ever seen on a human face. “I’m trying to save your life, and you’re acting like a little shit. Let’s go before I change my mind.”

“I don’t _know_ you!” Stiles shot back, feeling the beginning of a panic attack in his chest. A low, quick fluttering of his heart, like a hummingbird. A hummingbird that would then drop a ton of concrete into his bowels and flood his brain with adrenaline. It was a really nasty little hummingbird, fuck off hummingbird. “All I know is your family died in a fire and now suddenly you’re back in town. _Why_ should I go with you? _Why_ should I trust you?”

Derek was silent for a moment, his teeth still bared. But then it felt like his hackles went back down: For some reason, Stiles had hit on exactly the right thing to say, the correct protest to get Derek to back off.

“You shouldn’t,” was the eventual answer. “But I’m all you’ve got. There aren’t any other werewolves in Beacon Hills, aside from the Alpha...and if he’s biting random teenagers, he’s not going to be rational.”

That made a certain amount of logical sense; a rational werewolf (which was the name of Stiles’ next album) would not attack random children in the forest. That was the act of a desperate beast, one that was either out for a difficult meal or a difficult pack. Especially if werewolves were a legitimate secret. Hell, the myths and legends made it impossible for the average person to filter truth from fiction. Werewolves being real was a mind-blower. This whole world was full of mysterious, arcane secrets, the undead going bump in the night. Which was cool! In a way. But in this specific sense, in _his_ specific case, it was a fucking terror-show.

“Okay,” Stiles said, his eyes going slightly manic. “You say not to trust you, then I won’t. See ya.”

He turned to walk away, and was spun around sharply, violently. The next thing he knew, Derek had him pressed up against the trunk of the tree he’d been curled under, holding him there. Derek was ridiculously strong, and Stiles could feel the pinpricks of claws digging into his jersey and nicking the flesh of his arms.

“Let go of me, you freak!” Stiles gasped, wriggling ineffectively, trying to escape. “I don’t care what you say. You’re responsible for this! For this happening to me!”

Derek looked momentarily hurt, and very young indeed. His eyes sparked an electric blue, flashing at Stiles for the briefest of seconds.

“Is it really so bad?” he asked quietly, his grip on Stiles not abating. “That you can heal faster, see further, hear more clearly? You sure weren’t complaining about it during practice. You’ve been given something most people would kill for. The bite is a gift.”

“I don’t want it.”

And yet, even as the words left his mouth, Stiles knew he was lying to himself. Hadn’t he felt the rush? Tasted Jackson’s fear and humiliation? Hadn’t he been able to get himself somewhere he’d always wanted to be? Hadn’t his train of thought, derailed at the best of times, suddenly become a bullet locomotive? He still had his separate tracks, but now they were all crystal clear and chugging along easily. The bite had made him even more of a genius than before. Or more of a smart-ass.

Derek tilted his head, and raised one eyebrow. He could taste the lie, too.

“...Put me down,” said Stiles, pouting a little, surrendering just enough.

Derek did as he was asked, even going so far as to brush Stiles off and straighten his jersey. It was a strangely endearing gesture, all things considered.

“I can’t...go with you,” Stiles said haltingly, running a hand over his buzzed hair. He could feel little pinpricks of blood soaking his jersey where Derek had grabbed him, soaked up by the moisture-wicking fabric, even as the tiny wounds closed instantly. “I just can’t, okay? I’ve got homework…”

“It’s Friday,” Derek replied, wholly unimpressed. 

“I have a thing,” Stiles tried, only to be stonewalled once again by those ridiculous eyebrows.

“If you mean the party tonight at Lydia Martin’s house, you’re not going,” Derek said flatly. That sent a thrill of rage through Stiles, and he bared his teeth at the other boy. Like a puppy discovering that it had sharp little pointy fangs to gnaw at your bones with.

“You can’t tell me what to do!” he barked, ready to throw punches if need be. Derek was snarling back, his face taking on strange shadows and bulges, when a third voice called across the back end of the lacrosse field, close to the woods where they were hiding.

“Stiles? Where are you?”

Scott.

Stiles spun toward his friend’s voice, even as Derek stepped back, melted into the trees. Gone a second before Scott arrived at a light jog, barely breathless. Stiles turned his head, and couldn’t spot Derek anywhere. Son of a…

“Dude, are you okay?” Scott was genuinely worried, Stiles could smell it on him as clearly as he could read the sad expression on his face. The rage and anxiety subsided, and Stiles slumped against the tree where Derek had just had him pinned.

“No, Scott,” he whispered, breaking just enough. “I’m really not.”

“Dude…”

Scott moved forward, put both of his hands on both of Stiles’ shoulders, and then pulled him into a tight hug. They hadn’t hugged like this since Stiles’ mom had died, since Scott’s dad had been kicked out. It took a moment, but then Stiles was hugging Scott back, uncaring if anybody saw. His fingers dug into the back of Scott’s jersey, balling the fabric up into tight knots.

“Scott…” Stiles found himself speaking against his will, speaking in a cracked voice a truth that had been hidden since the dawn of time. “I...I thought I was fucking with you. When I said werewolves were real. I didn’t mean it. But...but. Oh god…”

“Stiles?” Scott pulled back, but didn’t let go, his hands still gripping Stiles’ shoulders. “What…?”

“They’re real, Scotty,” Stiles gasped. “Werewolves. They’re real. I’m a werewolf. I… _shit_ , I know you’re gonna think I’m fucking with you and I can’t prove it. God. I swear, it’s real. I’ve been bitten by a werewolf and tonight I’m gonna turn into a monster.”

Scott had a moment of scepticism, but then saw the look on Stiles’ face. And in that moment, he believed. He believed one hundred percent, because Stiles was his brother. Scott McCall had never been this imaginative, wouldn’t make up this kind of weirdness. But he was willing to suspend cold logic to see the hot, irrational truth. Stiles was a sarcastic little shit, and a liar...but this? This was beyond anything Stiles would ever do in the chasing of a joke.

“You’re not a monster.”

That was the only thing Scott could think of to say, shaking Stiles’ shoulders slightly and holding him steady. Stiles looked up at him, too obviously a terrified child in that moment. There was something in Scott’s words, and the way he said them, that actually got through Stiles’ anxiety and panic. He listened, and for the first time in a long, long time, felt real hope.

“You’ll never be a monster, no matter what,” Scott said, slow and solemn. “I won’t let you be a monster, Stiles. Even if you are a werewolf.”

Slowly, eventually, Stiles nodded in understanding and acceptance. His heart rate slowed, and the shaking stopped, and he slumped back again, Scott letting go of his shoulders as he did. He was going to be okay, because Scott wouldn’t let him be a monster.

Hell. He didn’t deserve a friend this good.

“What are we gonna do?” he asked, not even hesitating in using that ‘we.’ Scott thought hard for a second, and then he let out a little sigh.

“We’re gonna go get changed. We’re gonna go home and shower. We’re gonna go out and have fun tonight, and we’ll leave the party before the full moon rises. I’ll drive you home, and we’ll have a sleepover. I’ll make sure you don’t hurt anybody or get out, okay?”

Stiles felt the weight lift off his chest, and he actually smiled, laughed. (If he’d been paying better attention, he would have figured out that his wildly fluctuating emotions were the first symptoms, and that the moon didn’t have to be in the sky…)

“Scotty, you’re a genius.”

“Eh. Tell that to my geometry grade.”

Laughing, both boys made their way back into the school, no-fiving each other, ready to fulfill Scott’s plan to the letter. So what if Stiles was a werewolf? He wasn’t going to let it affect his lifestyle choices.

Derek watched them go from his hiding place twenty feet away, understanding exactly what Scott was to Stiles.

That was going to make this ten thousand times more difficult. Especially when Scott died.

**********

Lydia Martin didn’t preen, primp, or waste time. Not when she was alone. At school, certainly, there was a bit of mirror-gazing, and a lot of selfie taking. That’s what teenage girls did. Normal teenage girls.

Lydia Martin never had been and never would be normal.

And she bloody well knew it.

It had started when her grandmother was still alive, the weirdness. The way her grandmother would look at her sometimes, as if trying to figure out a particularly tricky equation. The little voice in the back of her head that would whisper strange things, about numbers, and letters that stood in for numbers, and people. The way she _knew_ that her grandmother was dying, well before the cancer came. It wasn’t every seventy-two year old woman that would confide great secrets to a six year old, teach them about rising tides and lunar pull and the Fibonacci sequence. How the fractal spiral worked, the simple elegance of it. That would teach a six year old girl Latin and French and Greek and Mandarin. Lydia had soaked it all up, retained it, expanded with it. She wasn’t a sponge, she was a monolith.

And at seven when the cancer did its work, Lydia had laid awake in bed that night, crying helplessly before the phone call came from the hospital. The phone call was anti-climactic, since she already knew.

Finding out her IQ at ten hadn’t been a shock, either. It felt like that particular three digit number was already tattooed on the backs of her eyelids. She knew. She had known since grandmother had already told her what it was, years ago.

It belatedly occurred to her that she’d actually tested out to exactly that number as a point of pride.

She quietly suspected the number was actually much higher.

It was a hell of a thing, to be a genius, and confined by society to certain standards. Girls weren’t smart, the television taught and lectured and droned, slapping her in the face with its tired tropes. Girls were pretty and decorative and ruthless and manipulative and vain. She was a girl. So, logically, she’d become the trope.

At least as camouflage. At least for now. At least in Beacon Hills.

It didn’t take a genius to see that the best thing she could do was hide exactly how smart she was. So she watched her first classmates carefully, getting just the right amount of quiz answers completely wrong, and found her target. Mieczyslaw Stilinski was almost as smart as she was, in a perpendicular line to her. A ninety degree tangent, equally devastating but in ways that could only hardly ever intersect. At first, she’d been drawn to him, carefully concealing her early crush and her attention on him. She needed have bothered. He was smart, he saw things other people didn’t see, but he was oblivious in his own special way. When he developed a crush on her in return, she did the only thing she could do, for her own self-preservation: She ignored him completely.

Instead, she cultivated the sort of friendships that a girl her age was supposed to have, and gravely and seriously discussed Barbie dolls, glamorous teeny-bopper musicians, and television shows. Like she was supposed to. She did it efficiently and completely, with a sort of jaw-clenched cheeriness, determined to see the value in injection molded plastic and lip gloss and N’Sync.

But when she was alone at night, when the other girls she’d chosen to hide herself among weren’t there, the facade would drop, and she’d sigh in relief, and bury herself in her textbooks. They were carefully hidden under her bed in a small foot locker, which was covered with Lisa Frank unicorns and kittens. (Hush, she liked Lisa Frank. Just because she was a genius didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate cute things.) And she’d read and read and read, eyes alight and tired and full of affection for the people who’d written those precious books. She’d go without sleep on weekends so she could keep up the social facade, and stay up early into the morning reading.

And it worked. She’d set her clockwork, jewel-bright mind to hiding in plain sight, and it worked. She was the most popular girl at school, with a carefully calculated GPA, high enough to excel but not the highest. Enough that in junior high she was setting the stage for her college years, how every fluctuation of a percentage point would bring in a certain amount of scholarship funds. She had it planned meticulously, down to the last penny of interest.

Still. There were moments where she’d find herself drifting, her mind blanking in self-defense, as somebody in her circle nattered on about something so supremely unimportant. It was then that the whispers would begin, deep in the darkest corners of her consciousness. Whispers about time, fleeting time, like a digital clock display stamped above people’s heads. Time stamped in decades, months, hours, minutes, seconds. It frightened her in a way she couldn’t comprehend, and in a blink they’d be gone, and she’d be back to herself. She told nobody about these fugue states, for fear they’d send her to Echo House. That was a trope she fully intended to dodge; the persecuted, mad genius. No thank you.

Then, when she was fourteen years old, she did something stupid. She fell in love. Or at least something resembling it.

Jackson Whittemore had been living in Beacon Hills as long as she had, and she’d noticed him, of course. Who wouldn’t notice those beautiful eyes? But it was what lurked behind those eyes that really snagged her. He was another perpendicular genius, ambition and need for belonging shining out of every pore. What had finally gotten her attention was an eloquent paper he wrote for English lit, that she got to read. It was exactly the sort of polished, precise language she used when aiming for a specific goal or grade.

He was doing exactly what she was doing, only from the opposite side. He was able to chase his beautiful ambitions without fear, because he was a man. His wasn’t camouflage, it was the spiritual equivalent of a mating display. Look at me, it said. I’ve got the brains, the looks, the money, the drive. I’ll be at Yale Law in less than three years. I’m _going places_. Important places. Law is just the means. No, I’m not going to be a district attorney in a rinky-dink nowhere town. I’m going to Sacramento. New York. Washington.

And that was that. In an unspoken moment of sympatico, she went to him, dropped her facade, and showed him the truth about herself.

From then on, they were side by side. Sex was a grand experiment and it turned out she really liked it, and he was good at it. The rumors that started swirling about them were uncomplimentary at first, but then awed, as they both shot to the top of the scholastic standings. Now she could let some of her own ambition shine through, as if reflected off of his gleaming need. And when Jackson got his Porsche, they christened it together up at Makeout Point.

They’d been together for over a year when he gave her the key to his house, and she gave him her key. They were in this for keeps. She was going to look spectacular in her wedding dress. So no, she didn’t primp and preen, because she had no reason to. She knew where her future was taking her, and knew she already looked damn good.

...Well, okay, she did her hair and makeup for the party.

The party wasn’t the size of her yearly birthday bash, but it was still a good night, celebrating the lacrosse line-ups for another season. Everybody on the lacrosse team was invited, naturally. Only this year, there was an upset in the pecking order, because Stilinski had been given a spot on first line.

“Are you sure I can’t just punch him in his stupid face?”

Jackson was lounged on Lydia’s bed, thumbing idly through one of her textbooks, while she finished her makeup and hair. She glanced at him in reflection, before snapping her attention back to herself, before he noticed her looking.

“Not at my parent’s house, no,” she replied patiently, if a little waspishly.

“I hate the way he looks at you,” Jackson said, grumbling and dark. It was a display of machismo that should have been objectionable, as if she was some piece of property for him to protect. But really, she couldn’t be angry with him, because he had a point.

“I’m not a fan of it either,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But if you give that little twerp any attention, it’ll just make things worse. Ignore him, Jackson.”

Jackson huffed impatiently, and flopped the book closed with a papery ‘whump.’ 

“I can’t ignore him,” he said, his perfect face twisting into an infuriated grimace. “He made first line, and he’s clearly juicing. Coach won’t ever see it. If he keeps beating me like this…”

“Beating whom?” Lydia asked sweetly, finally looking at him in the mirror, batting her eyelashes at him. “He’s on your same team, sweetie. _Use_ him. Make it look like it was all your brilliant idea. Let him be the flashy player, and _you_ be the solid, strategic captain. Win the games, and it doesn’t matter who scored the most, right?”

Jackson didn’t answer for a moment, instead shuffling himself to sitting on the edge of Lydia’s bed, arms at a forty-five degree angle behind him, propping him up on locked elbows. He regarded her steadily, face still set in that frown. But then he slowly controlled himself, and looked down at her pink lace comforter.

“I always score the most points.”

It was Lydia’s turn to huff impatiently. Sometimes she truly hated him when he got like this, petulant and childish. Sometimes she felt more like a big sister than a girlfriend. Which was patently ridiculous, as Jackson was several months older than she was.

“Fine,” she said, putting a bit too much snap into her tone. Edging into bitchy, frankly. “Blow the championship because Stilinski stepped on your ego. That’ll look great on your transcripts.”

Jackson snarled again, but then closed his eyes. Swallowed. And finally nodded.

“You’re right,” he admitted. “But if he mouths off to me…”

“Hazing in a locker room is acceptable,” she said, this time a lot more kindly. “Assaulting somebody at my parents’ _currently-in-escrow-pending-the-finalization-of-their-divorce_ property is not. Please? Big Picture.”

Big Picture was their code, for when one or both of them just wanted to light the world on fire and watch it burn, and had to be reminded why they couldn’t. That got a little, knowing smirk out of him, and the emotional temperature of the room dropped considerably. Although there was a mischievous little glint in his eyes now, and she knew what that meant.

“Now I’m tense,” he pouted, staring at her through long eyelashes, and she rolled her eyes.

“You’re always tense,” she retorted, knowing what he wanted, and knowing she would give in. Sure enough, he leaned even further back on the bed, lifting his hips subtly in her direction as she watched through the mirror. Ugh. Teenage boys were the worst. She couldn’t wait until he was past this stage of his adolescence and got his hormones under control. But a small smirk curled up her perfectly glossed lips, and she turned back to him with a perfect flounce, cocked an eyebrow up.

“I’m not smudging my lipstick,” she told him, letting him know immediately that using her mouth was off the table.

“You can reapply it,” he countered, carefully and clearly negotiating.

“No,” was the firm and final counter-offer. And Jackson may be an over-sexed, ambitious little spoiled brat...but when she said no, he listened, and respected it. He wasn’t totally irredeemable.

“Please?” he purred in acceptance, one hand drifting to the fly of his jeans, teasingly pulling the zipper down an inch.

“Take your shirt off. I don’t want to stain it.”

He did as he was told, revealing that lightly-freckled, incredibly fit, athletic body that he was so ridiculously proud of. If anybody primped and preened in this relationship, it really was him. But even so, she felt a surge of affectionate lust for him, and approached him like a big cat bringing down its prey.

Five minutes later, he was huffing happily on the bed, and she was delicately wiping her hand off with a tissue. For all the games that he liked to play, for all the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways they would denigrate and tease each other, this was the truth of it. She held all the power, leaving him breathless and thoughtless and floating in it. He was all part of the facade, in the end, but a very much beloved one. Once her hand was clean, she stood up off the bed and walked back to the mirror, finishing her eyeshadow.

“Get dressed, we’ve got to go pick Allison up in twenty minutes,” she said pertly, totally in control.

**********

The party was in full swing by the time Scott and Stiles arrived. Call it fashionably late, or call it Stiles double and triple checking what time the moon would rise tonight. He’d aced that part of his earth sciences class...when he was in 7th grade. Now as a Sophomore, that particular lesson of apogee and perigee was buried and forgotten. So he spent a good forty minutes on the internet calculating the precise moment of the moonrise.

As far as he could tell, the moon wouldn’t rise until well after midnight. Which meant that as long as he and Scott left Lydia’s party by ten thirty? They’d be golden. That gave them a good three and a half hours to enjoy themselves before they had to split.

The best laid plans of mice and werewolves…

There was a lot of loud music playing as they joined the revelry. The kind of loud music that had a lot of bass, and screamingly depressing lyrics. The kind of music that wasn’t popular because MTV said it was, but because actual kids actually liked it. The kind of music that rattled bones and neighbors, as Scott and Stiles wound their way into the throng.

 _“Stiles!”_

That hollered greeting was from Danny, standing in a cluster of the top talent of the lacrosse roster. He waved an enthusiastic arm, encouraging Stiles to join them. Stiles glanced at Scott. And Scott nodded his assent.

“Go on! Get it.”

Reluctantly, Stiles left Scott’s side and made his way over. Danny wasn’t the enemy, he really wasn’t. He might have been Jackson’s BFF, but he was a good dude. He wanted everybody to be included, regardless of high school bullshit popularity contests. Danny’s circle included five members of the lacrosse team, all of which were truly good at the game. For a brief moment, Stiles felt a twinge of guilt. At the heart of it, he knew was _cheating_ , and had absolutely zero right to be standing amongst these boys. But when Danny threw an arm around his shoulders, and handed him a red cup full of liquor….

Well. He couldn’t complain.

Scott smiled to himself, proud of Stiles’ acceptance, and turned away.

Bumping nose-to-nose into Allison.

“Oh!”

They both said it at the same time, and then both burst into giggles at their mutual awkwardness. She ducked her head, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear, as he straightened his shoulders, tried to look macho.

“Hey,” he finally managed. “Nice to see you here.”

“Yeah, same,” she answered. They were still too close to each other, too close without dancing. But they were both reluctant to step away. It felt good, it felt _right_ to be this close. She blinked a few times, and then smiled. She had dimples, cute little dimples that totally grabbed Scott’s attention. He was staring, he knew he was, but he’d do anything to keep staring at her dimples. Or maybe he’d start staring at her eyes, a beautiful black-brown. He wasn’t sure which was prettier, to be honest.

“You wanna dance?” she asked, her voice weak and unsure. She was just as anxious as he was, he suddenly realized. 

She liked him. Maybe as much as he liked her.

Oh crap.

“Yeah,” he blurted out after an awkwardly long pause. “Yeah, let’s dance!”

And that’s when she took his hand.

Floating on a haze of joyous disbelief, Scott followed Allison out of the living room and into the backyard. The patio was strung with a thousand little white Christmas lights, and there were floating candles on the surface of the pool. The pool was empty otherwise, which was not surprising, considering it was January. There were two or three dozen teen couples dancing on the concrete around it. Some were into the beat, some were just swaying back and forth as an excuse. Those couples were mostly making out. Scott ignored them. He was one thousand percent focused on Allison, as he put his hands on her hips.

Except.

A still and lurking figure near the back gate suddenly grabbed his attention. It was Derek Hale, still in his ridiculous leather jacket. He was scowling at the teenaged party-goers, arms down at his sides. He was watching the party from the shadows, eyes skipping over everybody there...until he saw Scott. Then he glared at him, fists clenching at his sides, and shook his head.

Scott froze, and Allison noticed. She paused, and turned back to him, concern clear in her expression.

“You okay?”

He looked at her, forgetting everything, and smiled. By the time he looked again, Derek was gone.

“I’m great,” he answered. And then all thoughts left his head, as he and Allison started to sway together.

Stiles and the rest of the lacrosse team were having…fun? Or something resembling that, anyway. Danny was encouraging Stiles to tell everybody his secrets, how he’d gotten so good at offensive line. The Beacon Hills lacrosse defensive line was legendary...but the offence was mainly just Jackson. So to have another solid offensive player was really incredible. Stiles turned to Isaac Lahey, shrugging innocently.

“You’re midfield?” he asked. Isaac snorted.

“Yeah. Like you care, First Line.”

And that told Stiles everything he needed to know about the team. There was zero camaraderie. It was about who was in what position, and who had the attention of the school, of Coach Finstock, of the town. He gripped his cup slightly tighter, and moved away.

He really shouldn’t be drinking, he knew that. Not when the threat of a full moon was hanging over him. But he took a long, gulping chug of the drink in his hand, tasting the vodka in the punch. When he finished the drink, he dropped the cup onto the floor thoughtlessly. It was okay, there were dozens of similar red cups crushed underfoot. Dizzy, he glanced around the party, trying to find Scott. He was nowhere to be seen. But then…

Then his gaze landed on Lydia. She was perched on Jackson’s lap at the top of the stairs, crowded into the window seat, kissing him deeply. Making out with him. It grabbed him by the gonads and _squeezed._ After all these years, watching Lydia making out with Jackson was the final straw. That dizzy-drunk feeling morphed into something deeper, something worse.

Something he knew he had to control.

Lurching away, he staggered out of the party half-blind. He heard a few distant voices asking him if he was okay, but they were easily shrugged off. He managed to get to his car, keys in hand. There was a small voice in the back of his head that told him he wasn’t able to drive. Not because of the liquor, but because of the _change._ He could feel it claiming his every cell, his every inch. The full moon wasn’t yet blooming in the sky, but he knew he was changing. 

He was becoming a proper werewolf.

His sky-blue Jeep sped off into the night.

And a few spare seconds later, a Camaro followed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr at zinglebert-bembledack :D


End file.
